Anna Minzer

I remove the lid from the hot cauldron, a cloud of steam envelops my face. I rub my sticky cheeks with my sleeve, peering into the murky fluid. Spinach swirls in khaki toned water, each leaf pushed and pulled by big ascending bubbles. I turn off the heat and just let it sit. Like a gestation period, as the water cools from boiling to hot, it leaches more and more chlorophyl from the spinach. When I pull the lid again, the concoction shimmers like a muddy lake.

Brewing spinach-based developer is one step of many to imbue Another Loud Knock with both the household and the organic. From the use of my own face to the textiles hanging on the wall, the project visualizes melancholy in the feminine domestic.  

 The fiber prints of Another Loud Knock celebrate their curling edges and are layered upon each other to create sculptural objects. Stained tissue paper represents a shed skin, and snakes throughout the installation, twisting into fabric.  A dimly lit space where photographs are situated on wooden plate-holders, the project appears to possess a woman’s touch. Yet the images visualize a woman integrating into nature. Gaps in her face give way to flowers, dirt, and leaves, positioning her as a temporary vessel in a living landscape.

 Another Loud Knock evokes decorative beauty while picturing its transformation into the grotesque. Part of women’s work is to make your own body a façade, to shape and present yourself in society’s image, to hide the inherent abjection of the body. The installation instills an eerie atmosphere, a stylized interior incorporated with a woman’s subsumption.

 Yet, the morbidity of Another Loud Knock is as layered as the installation’s loose woven cottons. Diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder, I engage in therapy and take anti-depressants to curtail suicidal ideation. While the treatment for my illness has been successful, on the periphery of my mind, death still stands as a form of release from complexities of the material world.