STATEMENT
My sculptures explore body maintenance and the intimate collectivity of public space. In my work, familiar care products —toothbrushes, tissues, toilets, towel dispensers— are exhibited in repetition and exaggerated scale, becoming communal domestic sites. I am interested in making visible bodily need fulfillment (cleansing, voiding, masturbating, crying) and the labor of tending to ourselves and others. In my installations, visitors are offered places to reflect on their own histories of touch, care, and survival.
This work is shaped by the history of queer archival practices. Since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, preserving queer culture has meant archiving even the most mundane or domestic objects as relics. The scraps of receipt paper gay educator Rafael Suarez kept his blood pressure records on, the spice jars filled with kink enthusiast Robert Chesley’s pubic hair collection, the lifetime diaries of transgender forefather Lou Sullivan, and more. Such relics function to honor the dead, but also to imagine a future where what is deemed “important” or “archival” is interrogated and ordinariness is celebrated.
My queer and trans experience of bathrooms as multi-layered sites of function, pleasure and violence informs my relationship with this universal source material. I create site-specific installations utilizing architectural elements such as bathroom stall components, fixtures, drop ceiling tiles, modified bathroom signage, and paper products. Anti-transgender lawmakers have repeatedly used the vulnerability of the public bathroom to try to restrict transgender peoples' access to shared space. Even as trans visibility increases, public support of these bathroom bills is also increasing. Anti-sex homophobes have historically shut down bathrooms as sites of gay lovemaking, further excluding street-based people, families, disabled people, and anyone who wants or needs to use a bathroom together. Meanwhile, COVID has renewed fear of physical proximity and body fluid exchange. I keep returning to bathrooms as source material because they continue to act as intersectional spaces of need and exclusion.
Because the subject matter of my work is inspired by how people physically navigate domestic and public space, it is important that my 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, answer a public telephone in a bathroom stall, or sit inside an upright bathtub, I connect with audiences through these seemingly banal objects of daily living.
My most recent project is a collaborative performance installation with Maxe Crandall about intimacy, community building, and pleasure during times of fear. Inspired by the late playwright Robert Chesley’s 1985 play Jerker about the AIDS epidemic, this project investigates “corresponding intimacies,” a term used to describe the deep bonds people create through shared fantasies. Phone sex, epistolary sex, and other forms of sex where the body is physically absent to the lover draw attention to the roles of distance and imagination in finding connection.
My sculptures explore body maintenance and the intimate collectivity of public space. In my work, familiar care products —toothbrushes, tissues, toilets, towel dispensers— are exhibited in repetition and exaggerated scale, becoming communal domestic sites. I am interested in making visible bodily need fulfillment (cleansing, voiding, masturbating, crying) and the labor of tending to ourselves and others. In my installations, visitors are offered places to reflect on their own histories of touch, care, and survival.
This work is shaped by the history of queer archival practices. Since the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, preserving queer culture has meant archiving even the most mundane or domestic objects as relics. The scraps of receipt paper gay educator Rafael Suarez kept his blood pressure records on, the spice jars filled with kink enthusiast Robert Chesley’s pubic hair collection, the lifetime diaries of transgender forefather Lou Sullivan, and more. Such relics function to honor the dead, but also to imagine a future where what is deemed “important” or “archival” is interrogated and ordinariness is celebrated.
My queer and trans experience of bathrooms as multi-layered sites of function, pleasure and violence informs my relationship with this universal source material. I create site-specific installations utilizing architectural elements such as bathroom stall components, fixtures, drop ceiling tiles, modified bathroom signage, and paper products. Anti-transgender lawmakers have repeatedly used the vulnerability of the public bathroom to try to restrict transgender peoples' access to shared space. Even as trans visibility increases, public support of these bathroom bills is also increasing. Anti-sex homophobes have historically shut down bathrooms as sites of gay lovemaking, further excluding street-based people, families, disabled people, and anyone who wants or needs to use a bathroom together. Meanwhile, COVID has renewed fear of physical proximity and body fluid exchange. I keep returning to bathrooms as source material because they continue to act as intersectional spaces of need and exclusion.
Because the subject matter of my work is inspired by how people physically navigate domestic and public space, it is important that my 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, answer a public telephone in a bathroom stall, or sit inside an upright bathtub, I connect with audiences through these seemingly banal objects of daily living.
My most recent project is a collaborative performance installation with Maxe Crandall about intimacy, community building, and pleasure during times of fear. Inspired by the late playwright Robert Chesley’s 1985 play Jerker about the AIDS epidemic, this project investigates “corresponding intimacies,” a term used to describe the deep bonds people create through shared fantasies. Phone sex, epistolary sex, and other forms of sex where the body is physically absent to the lover draw attention to the roles of distance and imagination in finding connection.
BIO
Emmett Ramstad’s sculpture and participatory work explore body maintenance and the intimate collectivity of public space by modifying the scale and function of familiar care products. Ramstad lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota and has exhibited artworks widely, including solo exhibitions at Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Rochester Art Center. He is a recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including a McKnight Fellowship for Visual Artists, an Onassis Eureka Commissions Grant, a Jerome Foundation Franconia Sculpture Park Fellowship, a Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Next Step Award, a Forecast Public Art Research and Development Grant, and a Leeway Foundation Art and Change grant. He has performed in productions with collaborator Maxe Crandall as HOLD and with The BodyCartography Project. He has made costumes and sets for five touring contemporary dance productions and has curated and organized numerous gallery shows. His work is in collections at The Minnesota Museum of American Art, The Weisman Art Museum, Minnesota Center for Book Arts and Second State Press. He is currently a lecturer in the Department of Art at University of Minnesota.
Emmett Ramstad’s sculpture and participatory work explore body maintenance and the intimate collectivity of public space by modifying the scale and function of familiar care products. Ramstad lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota and has exhibited artworks widely, including solo exhibitions at Minneapolis Institute of Arts and Rochester Art Center. He is a recipient of numerous grants and fellowships including a McKnight Fellowship for Visual Artists, an Onassis Eureka Commissions Grant, a Jerome Foundation Franconia Sculpture Park Fellowship, a Metropolitan Regional Arts Council Next Step Award, a Forecast Public Art Research and Development Grant, and a Leeway Foundation Art and Change grant. He has performed in productions with collaborator Maxe Crandall as HOLD and with The BodyCartography Project. He has made costumes and sets for five touring contemporary dance productions and has curated and organized numerous gallery shows. His work is in collections at The Minnesota Museum of American Art, The Weisman Art Museum, Minnesota Center for Book Arts and Second State Press. He is currently a lecturer in the Department of Art at University of Minnesota.