Strange Llamas
Yale University Spring 2018
Published in Retrospecta 41 Focusing on binaries such as artificial vs. real and natural vs. man-made, this project blurs the lines between the two through materiality and composition. In order to address the question of strangeness and familiarity in today’s visual culture, Strange Llamas removes the digital signature of the form-making process and borrows from a seemingly natural material palette. However, because its formal and material qualities teeter on the border of strange and familiar, one cannot help but ask, ‘What is it?’ Are they llamas? Dinosaurs? Manipulated primitive shapes?
Strange Llamas neither endeavors to mimic nature nor refute it in a technophilic way. Rather, it borrows from nature, but fuses it with the human-made, particularly through materiality. The use of moss, brick, mossy brick, and bricky moss, in addition to the individual forms’ relative positions to each other, blur its reading. Strange Llamas locates itself as both/and, as opposed to neither/nor.