Female Archetypes: Vulnerability and Resistance
Location: Entry Foyer
Female characters play a central role in Hart's works. They range from the role of victim to one of self-empowerment: Alice, Ophelia, the Queen Elizabeth Bot and E embody different manifestations of female existence in patriarchal and technological systems.
While Ophelia is the symbolic figure of female powerlessness and psychological self destruction, floating lifelessly in plastic waste, with E: The Woman of the Future is a changeable cyborg icon optimized to the point of facelessness. Both are the victims of patriarchal power structures.
Whether it is the cyclically blossoming and withering body in The Seasons or the shiny chrome, digitally mutilated Mortification sculptures, Claudia Hart condenses beauty and transience into melancholy images that provocatively juxtapose slick consumer aesthetics with flawed bodies. In so doing, she shows technology as both limiting and liberating female identity.
My small figurines ‐ The Mortications 01 and 02 ‐ were originally 2007 Rapid prototype 3D printed sculptures made from ABS plastic, using a figure that I modeled using Maya 3D animation software. I later adapted it in 2018 by using the fantasy "Kryptonite" process developed in collaboration with designer Benjamin Stagle, in which a plastic model was dipped in nickel chrome, then lacquered, stained, and placed on a cast rubber pedestal produced specifically for the piece. Our title and intentions were ironic, as they were neither archival nor endowed with any metaphysical magic like the original Kryptonite was in the Superman 1938 comics series.