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Mara Ezekiel: Wooden Fish

Wooden Fish

Mara Ezekiel

I took my world apart only to put it back together. Using flat and vibrant colors, I illustrated shops, buses, road signs, stars and other significant objects pulled from conversations and personal experiences over the past six months. Building this system allowed me to form relationships across distanced moments. I created a more comprehensive and mindful version of my own reality. In my schema, inanimate objects - an equation, hot dog cart, and a PVC pipe, line up to board a bus I encountered in Detroit; the bus windows were painted to say “Need help? Call Erick.” Each embodiment personifies a moment in which I needed help - graduating, finding my friends in New York, and building a planter.

In an act of repurposing, I removed each character from their contexts. Structured by a new, para-fictional world, I was able to test object relationships. Transforming memories into stylized objects reflects the value I see in looking at humorous moments coupled with weighty ones. A Subaru, which holds hundreds of wooden planks, represents a series of excessive, material-driven, middle-of-nowhere, Craigslist runs. Behind it, an auto shop, where workers suggest getting help from my dad, brother or husband,perpetuates sexism. The world I put together challenges me to look beyond the world I took apart.

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