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 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.
BIO
Emmett Ramstad’s art practice explores body maintenance and the intimate collectivity of public space through sculpture, installation, performance, and social engagement. Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota he has exhibited artworks nationally and internationally, 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, two Minnesota State Arts Boards grants, a Franconia Sculpture Park Fellowship, a Jerome Foundation Fellowship, a Forecast Public Art Research and Development Grant, and an Art and Change grant from the The Leeway Foundation. He has participated in several artist residencies including Marble House Projects and Tofte Lake and performed in productions with collaborator Maxe Crandall and BodyCartography Project, in addition to making costumes and sets for five touring contemporary dance productions. He has curated and organized numerous gallery shows, given lectures and artist talks widely, and 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. Ramstad is currently a lecturer in the Department of Art at University of Minnesota.
Emmett Ramstad’s art practice explores body maintenance and the intimate collectivity of public space through sculpture, installation, performance, and social engagement. Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota he has exhibited artworks nationally and internationally, 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, two Minnesota State Arts Boards grants, a Franconia Sculpture Park Fellowship, a Jerome Foundation Fellowship, a Forecast Public Art Research and Development Grant, and an Art and Change grant from the The Leeway Foundation. He has participated in several artist residencies including Marble House Projects and Tofte Lake and performed in productions with collaborator Maxe Crandall and BodyCartography Project, in addition to making costumes and sets for five touring contemporary dance productions. He has curated and organized numerous gallery shows, given lectures and artist talks widely, and 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. Ramstad is currently a lecturer in the Department of Art at University of Minnesota.