Rupture
Suzi Webster
Projection measuring 7’ by 4’, laptop computer, interior of a wall
Description:
A large green image is projected on the wall of a room. A circle is cut through the wall. The screen of a laptop embedded in the wall displays a looping red image measuring three inches by four inches. The sound of breathing can be heard if the viewer is close to the hole cut in the wall. This work explores the state of rupture, where the border/layer/skin/wall/body has been shattered/broken/probed. It creates an experience for the viewer of that liminal space that is neither inside nor outside, but is a third space inbetween.

Artist’s Statement
As humans, we long for some kind of meaning, some sort of definitive answer. Too often in these fragmented times, the search for the core, for meaning, is like the unraveling of a Russian doll – the peeling away of layers reveal more layers nested inside.
Rupturing/shattering a boundary or layer creates a new/different relationship between what is on either side of the boundary. There is a bleeding through, a blurring, a way in which we see both the inside and the outside differently. Rather than focus on the binary of either the inside or the outside, this work allows both to be held in a different way. A both/and condition/experience.
Homi Bhabbha suggests liminality as an interstitial passage between fixed identifications that represents a possibility for cultural hybridity – a hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed or imposed hierarchy. In this sense, Rupture offers the liminal as a space of transformation, a period of ambiguity between the dualities of vulnerable/protected; inside/outside; virtual/tangible; real/projected; alien/familiar; public/private; commerce/culture.
© Suzi Webster 2004