handy for now, 2023
IN COLLABORATION WITH TRAVIS MCEWEN
Tissue boxes, tissues, poster board, linen card stock, posters, wooden platforms
Handy for Now is an exhibition of sculptures and drawings about body maintenance, pleasure, and the intimate collectivity of public space. The exhibition combines homemade tissue box sculptures and hand drawn public service announcement posters that celebrate and normalize sex and illness during public health concerns.Handy for Now combines homemade tissue box sculptures and hand drawn public service announcement posters. Created in response to renewed fear of physical proximity and body fluid exchange brought on by covid and mpox, as well as the death of my father, the exhibition reconsiders health concerns, pleasure, community, and tissue boxes.
Tissue boxes, which were designed to provide a single user with a solitary tissue to dispose of fluids, are handed out by therapists, doctors, teachers, lovers: “Here you go, contain yourself.” In this exhibition, groupings of abnormally shaped, hunched and clustered tissue boxes remind me of humans peering out, coming together, and getting messy in proximity. What if we considered a tissue box a support system, a helpful bedside friend, or community during isolation? Would that help us keep clean, feel connected, grieve, and celebrate pleasure more?
On the walls are enlarged and reprinted drawings partly created for an mpox pop-up vaccine clinic organized by Chandler Daily and the MPLS MPOX Taskforce at Family Tree Clinic in Minneapolis. Drawn in collaboration with Travis McEwen, the drawings feature paper towel dispensers and tissue and glove boxes with sexual support messages. Unlike traditional public health messages which focus on isolation and containment, these drawings celebrate and normalize sex and illness, while offering empathetic suggestions for sexual options during outbreaks.
Additional drawings such as “Tissue: For When Things Get Harder,” “Grief Tissues: For When One Isn’t Enough,“ and the tissue chair are a continuation of the mpox public service announcement series and me processing the death of my father.
A note about language: When these posters were first drawn, mpox had not been renamed yet and was referred to by the former, racist classification of monkeypox. Therefore, the drawings in this exhibition, which were created in the summer of 2022, are a historical representation of this outbreak before the renaming.
Special thanks to Olli Johnson for construction help, Miles Mullen for printing help, Chandler Daily and Kit Aizura Ramstad for travel support, and WUD staff for install and technical support.
Emmett Ramstad is a recipient of a 2022 McKnight Fellowship for Visual Artists, funded by The McKnight Foundation and administered by the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
Photos by Rik Sferra and Emmett Ramstad
Prints and file work by Miles Mullen
Tissue boxes, tissues, poster board, linen card stock, posters, wooden platforms
Handy for Now is an exhibition of sculptures and drawings about body maintenance, pleasure, and the intimate collectivity of public space. The exhibition combines homemade tissue box sculptures and hand drawn public service announcement posters that celebrate and normalize sex and illness during public health concerns.Handy for Now combines homemade tissue box sculptures and hand drawn public service announcement posters. Created in response to renewed fear of physical proximity and body fluid exchange brought on by covid and mpox, as well as the death of my father, the exhibition reconsiders health concerns, pleasure, community, and tissue boxes.
Tissue boxes, which were designed to provide a single user with a solitary tissue to dispose of fluids, are handed out by therapists, doctors, teachers, lovers: “Here you go, contain yourself.” In this exhibition, groupings of abnormally shaped, hunched and clustered tissue boxes remind me of humans peering out, coming together, and getting messy in proximity. What if we considered a tissue box a support system, a helpful bedside friend, or community during isolation? Would that help us keep clean, feel connected, grieve, and celebrate pleasure more?
On the walls are enlarged and reprinted drawings partly created for an mpox pop-up vaccine clinic organized by Chandler Daily and the MPLS MPOX Taskforce at Family Tree Clinic in Minneapolis. Drawn in collaboration with Travis McEwen, the drawings feature paper towel dispensers and tissue and glove boxes with sexual support messages. Unlike traditional public health messages which focus on isolation and containment, these drawings celebrate and normalize sex and illness, while offering empathetic suggestions for sexual options during outbreaks.
Additional drawings such as “Tissue: For When Things Get Harder,” “Grief Tissues: For When One Isn’t Enough,“ and the tissue chair are a continuation of the mpox public service announcement series and me processing the death of my father.
A note about language: When these posters were first drawn, mpox had not been renamed yet and was referred to by the former, racist classification of monkeypox. Therefore, the drawings in this exhibition, which were created in the summer of 2022, are a historical representation of this outbreak before the renaming.
Special thanks to Olli Johnson for construction help, Miles Mullen for printing help, Chandler Daily and Kit Aizura Ramstad for travel support, and WUD staff for install and technical support.
Emmett Ramstad is a recipient of a 2022 McKnight Fellowship for Visual Artists, funded by The McKnight Foundation and administered by the Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
Photos by Rik Sferra and Emmett Ramstad
Prints and file work by Miles Mullen