Ann Stoddard astoddard@net-site.com

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a site specific installation by Ann Stoddard

In Genealogy of a Floor and Table bright light shoots from beneath the floor, dim light falls from the ceiling. Floors, wall, and plates speak out, and disproportion signifies, i.e. table height, size compared to the number of place settings. Messages in thrown flour and printed on floor and plates invite decoding of height/ scale/ position using dominant/marginal points of view of class, race, gender. Home and work become contested territory in which ‘they’ and ‘I’ elevate marginalized points of view towards identity and place, naming and belonging. Height and position can be read as codes of class, gender, race and as embedded historical narratives about economic production and social control. Shifting floor levels and textual reinscription connect and divide extremes of millennial capitalism- high tech/service, salaried/hourly, office/ home- and residents of Washington DC. Floor levels, place settings, reinscriptions, a split table, - suggest myriad references –found narratives of corporate, civic, and domestic control and production. A generously sized table covered with lace displays two full place settings (with text). A large hole in the floor -where access tiles have been removed- allows viewers to see into, climb down to the lower level occupied by a smaller crowded, table set with only plates and spoons. Wall text-arranged in a wide V across the rear wall, illuminated from below - seems to emanate from the shining space below the steel ‘access’ (production studio) flooring. Dislocations in floor height within this installation are mirrored in wall text documenting the successive dislocations of the family of Mr. Junior Martin by "restoration projects." A ceiling cable connects a split conference table/ computer desk with a computer and strung up work boots. This installation uses its site- the former Video Production Studio/Control Room of Black Entertainment TV- and its location - 14^th Street/Cardozo High School area of Shaw (an older, unrestored DC neighborhood) to explore social, economic, and spiritual aspects of control and production. Genealogy of a Floor and Table is my most recent work in a series that explores intersections of memory, identities, narratives, public space, and the politics of display in the construction of meaning. Like Genealogy of a Floor and Table, these works reinscribe social, geographical, and historical landscapes with missing points of view and contexts, restoring contradictions and foregrounding the viewer’s role in constructing artistic meaning. I seek a borderless space in which individual/ group memory, expectations around identity and the politics of display freely collide like geocultural plates, challenging limits, multiplying subjects, challenging ideas of domestic and civic order, urban renewal/ restoration. A 1997 site installation Genealogy of Towers, ReSearching the American Colonial Landscape stands in the sculpture garden of the Organization of American States/ Art Museum of the Americas facing Constitution Ave NW at 17^th Street NW. This viewer created montage uses site/ sight lines to reinscribe the Washington Monument. In 1998 SPACES Art Center, Cleveland, presented a solo exhibition of multimedia installations Ge/yNEOLOGY, Ex Vitro, and Sample. Control. Test. In fall 1999, Nexus Art Space in Atlanta will exhibit a new installation in the group show "From Your House to Our House." Stoddard is an adjunct art instructor at the University of Maryland- Baltimore and at the Maryland Institute of Art. Her art reviews and criticism occasionally appear in The New Art Examiner and The Washington Review.

Ann Stoddard, artist’s statement