As my persona Patchworked Venus, I write, collage, and strip to explore the relationship between people and digital devices. Through scholarly research, software, textiles, and performance, I reinterpret human-computer interaction theories by performing what dramaturg Ariel Osterweis calls, “a disavowal of virtuosity.” Following critical fabulation, literary scholar and cultural historian Saidiya Hartman's practice, as an inspirational and instructive framework, I disavow tech virtuosity by exposing digital materiality and how its perceived immateriality performs, like a spell, capitalistic disembodiment on its users.
Patchworked Venus takes her name from Patchwork Girl, Shelley Jackson's hypertext novel and “Venus in Two Acts,” Hartman's essay where she coined the term critical fabulation. My persona's name itself represents my materialist approach towards tech disavowal. The name juxtaposes a triumph of electronic literature with the triumphant failure of history. Jackson stitches the narrative and its raceless woman protagonist through hyperlinks. Hartman attempts to stitch the story of two black girls unbound by the extreme sexual violence that traps them in the story we call American history.
Because stitching is a defining characteristic of digital technology, Patchworked Venus stitches and is stitched. I sew hair, wire, and frayed fabric into collages and costume. I structure my research papers in the style of website information architecture. I write code to capture, distort, and recombine still images from video. Performing burlesque, I disassemble then reassemble the body of Patchworked Venus.
But one garment remains fixed: the eye mask. The mask I wear conceals and reveals the window to Patchworked Venus' soul. It is both redaction and tabula rasa. Wearing the mask mimics the destructive masking and unmasking I performed growing up on Long Island, New York. The choice to affix this garment to her body reflects my intimate connection to the persona.
The themes embodied in the works, desire, identity, memory, map my development as an artist. These themes are rooted in suburban isolation and a childhood obsession with late twentieth century fashion magazines and fetish aesthetics. Patchworked Venus is inextricably entwined with my own health, race, and gender biographies: my body's illegible adaptations, a feminism shaped by Afropessimism, heartbreak—romantic and technocratic.
Please reach out with any questions you have. I will be updating this website with images and links to my work.