Recipient Information
Location
Columbia, South Carolina
Medium
Mixed Media
Year of Award
2022
Grant or Fellowship
Southern Prize and State Fellowships
Grant Amount
$5,000
Artist Statement
My art does not fit neatly into a box to be packaged, labeled, and mass-produced; it is something to be experienced and contemplated.
I examine contemporary society through a lens of psycho-analysis by deconstructing everyday objects, actions, and experiences. This work often emerges on-site, composed of found items, mined from the surrounding area. I arrive equipped with only a color and the edge of an idea to learn from each place, situated in time, among its history and present day. The result invites viewers to enter the artwork as if stepping into a painting. This reality is separate from ordinary life and traditional art-viewing.
Domestic imagery (home) serves as a metaphor for the mind, highlighting the social psyche as it relates place to the formation of identity. Emotional tendencies such as insecurity, dependence, and compulsion are present, as comforts of ordinary life, such as the couch or chair are personified. Object placement is crucial to my process, as this action exerts a need for control much like posturing the self in public space. Color is used to heighten mental awareness by evoking an emotional response. Feelings of nostalgia, flashes of past trauma, or a dreamlike state of déjà vu may occur. These installations are temporary; thus, placing attention on the present moment while confronting consumer culture. I implore viewer investigation and imagination to draw one's own conclusions.
Biography
Brittany M. Watkins (b.1989, Carrollton, GA) lives and works in Columbia, South Carolina. She earned her BFA from the University of West Georgia and an MFA from Florida State University (2016). Her work has been exhibited in international art fairs, museums, non-profit, and experimental spaces in North America, Iceland, Germany, Estonia, and the Philippines. Recently, this included Art Fair Philippines, 2022. Her site-specific installation “<Accept [(Self) + Elsewhere]” was awarded the Juried Panel Prize in ArtFields 2017 ($25,000), where she later erected a public art installation at TRAX Visual Art Center. Watkins has participated in residencies such as The Vermont Studio Center, Hambidge Center for Creative Arts & Sciences, and 701 Center for Contemporary Art. She is currently working on a large-scale installation for which she received an individual project grant from the South Carolina Arts Commission; this work will be displayed alongside a new series of paintings at Westobou Gallery in Augusta, GA beginning June 2022. Additionally, her work was selected for a public installation inside of a historic guardhouse in the Olympia and Granby Mill District of Columbia, SC (summer 2022).
Maladaptation Sits
Year: 2021
Medium: Found & altered objects, vinyl & paint.
Size (h x w x d): 144" x 192" 120"
Maladaptation is the failure to adjust adequately or appropriately to the environment or situation.
This failed coping mechanism underlines a thematic thread in Watkins? work while reflecting on the concept of waiting. Viewers are faced with a human plagued by crippling anxiety.
Maladaptation Sits
Year: 2021
Medium: Found & altered objects, vinyl & paint.
Size (h x w x d): 144" x 192" x 120"
"Maladaptation" personifies underlying neuroses as the individual sits, waiting to face, the chaos of the mind in which it is enveloped.
GUT/CUT; Push Pull
Year: 2019
Medium: Mixed-media installation
Size (h x w x d): 96" x 12" x 12"
GUT/CUT refers to the physical body and the understood term of a gut feeling. The act of cutting and/or deconstruction was uncovered in this site-specific work as a method of psycho-analysis in Watkins' work. GUT/CUT grounds itself unapologetically in monochromatic shades of pink from floor to ceiling, calling into focus outdated notions of femininity as it relates to domesticity.
Psyche of a Narcissist
Year: 2019
Medium: Hand-sewn fabric, cinderblocks, wood, paint.
Size (h x w x d): 120" 52" x 48"
Installation detail and painting from GUT/CUT.
An Unnamed Place in Solitude (Time)
Year: 2020
Medium: Mixed-media installation
Size (h x w x d): 96" x 96" 216"
Built inside what was once a staple of the Eastside Bayfront Neighborhood in Erie, Pennsylvania, (formerly "Scotty's Jazz & Cigar Bar"), this site has a history and a life prior to that of its current state on 123 German Street. Examining the correlation between the life of the structure and that of the individual. This work confronts the passing of time both while in isolation and our ultimate mortality
A Place Unnamed in Solitude (Time)
Year: 2020
Medium: Mixed-media installation
Size (h x w x d): 96" x 96" x 96"
The book acts as a symbol for a portion of time. The act of reading also serves as an internal, mental act conducted in solitude.
Under them-there Hills, Mama...
Year: 2019
Medium: Mixed-media installation
Size (h x w x d): 168" x 240" x 216"
"Under them-there Hills, Mama..." is a site-specific installation informed by Watkins' upbringing in Carrollton, GA, and the contentious history of the American South. Literary techniques such as hyperbole, metaphor, and tone emerge throughout the work drawing connections between social hierarchies, familial relationships, identity, and place. The collapsed, oversized dining table (left entryway) set mid-meal, draws attention to the family dinner, a tradition in many southern households.
Under them-there Hills, Mama...
Year: 2019
Medium: Photography, installation, live performance.
Size (h x w x d): 168" x 240" x 216"
Rest; Slipping Away
Year: 2020
Medium: Photography, video still.
Size (h x w x d): 19.3" x 30" x 0
Taken on-site in Erie, PA, this photographic work shot after the loss of my father, coincides with a new body of work exploring themes of sickness, mortality, and loss.
The Color of Sickness
Year: 2021
Medium: Photography, performance, & handwritten text.
Size (h x w x d): 12" x 24"
Video-still from ongoing work.