USA Projects

OLD BAGS is a multi-media installation featuring image and sound elements that pose three facets of the female midlife experience - Invisibility, Captivity and Identity.  In an attempt to come to terms with my own experience as an aging female in America, I had traveled the country and documented over a hundred hours of discussions with women.  I felt that their voices needed to be heard and decided to collaborate with Faith Baum, an architect and fellow artist, to produce a unique multi-faceted viewer experience.  Together, we have expanded the traditional documentary genre and created OLD BAGS.

The OLD BAGS installation is composed of hundreds of photographic images of women aged 45 -65.  Each image presents a woman standing, facing the viewer, stripped to her underwear, and wearing a used shopping bag over her head.  The bodies appear to be intimate -but with no individuality. Captives of consumerism and self-appointed hostages, the personas are hidden by the bags.  The bags are recognizable. The women are not. A collage of background voices and text outline the experience of living in America and being a not-young female.

OLD BAGS is designed to be site-specific, ranging from single screen gallery exhibitions to building projections.   Intellectually, the installation is a “gestalt piece”- an of the moment portrait of a segment of woman in our culture.  Socially, it gives a voice to an invisible yet vital group of people. Communally, OLD BAGS will grow, encompassing photographs of more and more women and broadening the outcome with a web presence and a global community. 

In the United States someone turns fifty every eight seconds, and at least half, if not more, are women.  .  . Our hope is that OLD BAGS will specifically give middle-aged women a place and voice in the art world.  We ask that you donate to this project your support will further photo shoots and help to upgrade our equipment in order to create site-specific installations that respond to the true context and breadth of the contemporary female population.