body object series #3, shoe Possibly 1984 - 1991

Curator: Welcome! We are looking at “body object series #3, shoe,” a black and white photograph possibly created between 1984 and 1991 by Ann Hamilton. What is your first impression? Editor: It's absurd and arresting. There’s an almost painful quality to the image. That shoe jammed between the lips and nose...it's gagging him! What on earth does it mean? Curator: Exactly! I think it gets at something fundamental about how objects mediate our experience of ourselves. We wear things. We’re surrounded by them. They shape us, quite literally. Hamilton’s art frequently interrogates these strange proximities of skin, fabric, and space. Editor: It’s a clever use of a mundane object. A shoe, something so utterly functional and even banal, elevated to this disturbing status. We hardly ever consider the manufacture, distribution, and meaning we attached to shoes as they move along the different forms of labor, from factory to shop. Curator: Indeed. And thinking about labor—the labor of breath, of speaking, the obstruction! It feels like the photograph performs some unspoken, repressed tension, like when your collar feels just a little too tight. The portrait format and grayscale also help bring to mind that tradition in terms of subversion and power relations. Editor: It makes you wonder about the construction of this photograph, too. Was the sitter gagging in the moment? And also, that shoe is so perfectly clean. It looks freshly polished! Is she referencing, then, our obsession with surfaces? How we obscure wear and tear in the interests of preserving certain status symbols? Curator: Possibly, the whole series is an engagement with how we mediate and sometimes violate ourselves with these strange things. Hamilton’s piece acts as a kind of question, turning our focus back on how easily objects can colonize our senses and thoughts. Editor: This really forces you to look beyond the immediate image, prompting reflection on the wider context of consumption. Now I see it's as less about the individual in the photograph, and much more about all those structures that are in our shoes! I see them every day now! Curator: I find it quite touching that we started in such different places but were able to meet, with something that I think Hamilton would enjoy very much: both feeling with the materials, in our bodies, so to speak, and then, through conversation, arriving at a space where objects give shape to understanding!