STATEMENT
My sculptures and participatory works explore the intimate ordinary. I solicit materials that would otherwise be thrown out from friends, family and acquaintances: worn toothbrushes, socks with holes, underwear that has seen its day, as well as acquiring materials from scrap yards: bathroom stall doors, used towel dispensers. My work subverts the familiar banality of these materials through modifying their scale and function and displaying them in unexpected locations. By collecting and exhibiting objects that touch our most private places, I also seek to highlight the intimate collectivity of public spaces and inquire into what I call the infrastructure of daily life. What objects contribute to our maintenance as productive citizens? How are unspoken histories of dirt and use concealed by notions of cleanliness and order?
This work is shaped by an interest in the history of queer archival practices and queer history. Post-AIDS, preserving queer culture has meant archiving even the most mundane or domestic objects as relics. Such relics function to mourn the dead, but also to imagine a queer futurity. These questions of archiving and domesticity are particularly relevant given the current political climate, where same-sex desire has become both resolutely normal and positioned as vulnerable.
Because the subject matter of my work is inspired by how people relate to each other in personal and public space, it is important that the work literally touches or has touched people. Thus, the sculptures I make are often participatory or interactive. By inviting visitors to fold socks in the gallery or answer a public telephone in a bathroom stall, I create opportunities for audiences to physically engage with the works. My sculptures foster a communal domestic space in the gallery and provoke visitors to share their own histories with the infrastructure of daily life.
Evolving from the individual (the personal) towards the systemic (the public), my most recent work has been influenced by nationwide bathroom legislation that attempts to restrict trans people from using public facilities. Bathrooms, which have long been source material for my artworks, are now sites of increasing public attention, policing, surveillance and resistance. Who has access to privacy? Whose bodies are monitored publicly?
My sculptures and participatory works explore the intimate ordinary. I solicit materials that would otherwise be thrown out from friends, family and acquaintances: worn toothbrushes, socks with holes, underwear that has seen its day, as well as acquiring materials from scrap yards: bathroom stall doors, used towel dispensers. My work subverts the familiar banality of these materials through modifying their scale and function and displaying them in unexpected locations. By collecting and exhibiting objects that touch our most private places, I also seek to highlight the intimate collectivity of public spaces and inquire into what I call the infrastructure of daily life. What objects contribute to our maintenance as productive citizens? How are unspoken histories of dirt and use concealed by notions of cleanliness and order?
This work is shaped by an interest in the history of queer archival practices and queer history. Post-AIDS, preserving queer culture has meant archiving even the most mundane or domestic objects as relics. Such relics function to mourn the dead, but also to imagine a queer futurity. These questions of archiving and domesticity are particularly relevant given the current political climate, where same-sex desire has become both resolutely normal and positioned as vulnerable.
Because the subject matter of my work is inspired by how people relate to each other in personal and public space, it is important that the work literally touches or has touched people. Thus, the sculptures I make are often participatory or interactive. By inviting visitors to fold socks in the gallery or answer a public telephone in a bathroom stall, I create opportunities for audiences to physically engage with the works. My sculptures foster a communal domestic space in the gallery and provoke visitors to share their own histories with the infrastructure of daily life.
Evolving from the individual (the personal) towards the systemic (the public), my most recent work has been influenced by nationwide bathroom legislation that attempts to restrict trans people from using public facilities. Bathrooms, which have long been source material for my artworks, are now sites of increasing public attention, policing, surveillance and resistance. Who has access to privacy? Whose bodies are monitored publicly?
BIO
Emmett Ramstad is an artist whose work investigates the intimate ordinary through sculptural representations of bodies and their detritus. Ramstad lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota and has exhibited artworks nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Rochester Art Center. He is a recipient of a Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists, an Art and Change grant through The Leeway Foundation, and a Professional Development Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. He has performed in productions by The BodyCartography Project, made costumes and sets for five touring contemporary dance productions and has curated and organized six gallery shows. His work is in collections at The Weisman Art Museum, MCAD and Second State Press. He is a lecturer in the Department of Art at University of Minnesota.
Emmett Ramstad is an artist whose work investigates the intimate ordinary through sculptural representations of bodies and their detritus. Ramstad lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota and has exhibited artworks nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Rochester Art Center. He is a recipient of a Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists, an Art and Change grant through The Leeway Foundation, and a Professional Development Grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts. He has performed in productions by The BodyCartography Project, made costumes and sets for five touring contemporary dance productions and has curated and organized six gallery shows. His work is in collections at The Weisman Art Museum, MCAD and Second State Press. He is a lecturer in the Department of Art at University of Minnesota.
