Laura Splan, Gloves (2009). Cosmetic facial peel, mixed media. 1″H × 12″L × 3.5″W (each glove).
Laura Splan’s Gloves was featured on the Winter 2011 issue of Signs (volume 36, number 2), which featured a comparative perspectives symposium on gender and medical tourism edited by Andrew Mazzaschi and Emily A. MacDonald.
Artist Statement
Gloves is a pair of ladies gloves cast from the artist’s hands. The vivid detail and the implied function evoke the metaphor of slipping into the skin of another. The work is part of a larger series using remnant facial peel as fabric. The Trousseau series developed out of an interest in heirloom objects as they relate to cultural inheritance. The heirloom becomes a metaphor for social constructions as they are embedded in the objects that surround us. © 2008 by Laura Splan. Permission to reprint may be obtained only from the artist.
Biographical Statement
Laura Splan employs a variety of materials and processes that usually have a feminine sensibility about them. Unsettling biomedical imagery is foiled by more comfortable domestic imagery and craft processes. The familiar and benign are subverted by the anatomical and biological. She often uses her own body in the production of materials for her work (i.e., blood, facial peel). She was recently awarded a Pollock–Krasner Fellowship for the Byrdcliffe Artist Residency. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum for Arts and Design, Jönköpings County Museum, and PM Gallery & House.