ann lorraine schnake

Bare bulbs suggest a spare economy of things, casting critical edges in soft light; tools, weapons and iconography are transformed into gesture and talk to the domestic. An engagement with ideas colored by distance and imagination: this work interacts with the iconography of the former Yugoslavia.  40 years of socialism, sandwiched between two wars, a utopian vision dissolving into dystopia, with kernels of optimism still worth continuing to consider. My thought was to deconstruct tired narratives of failed socialism, examining my only families story and my tenuous hold on changing realtionships, while probing a nostalgia and romanticism with feral foms of domestic mterials,  searching to find a core of what remains useful and hopeful in the synthesis.