Better Homes [electronic resource].

SculptureCenter 2013

Open access content

A boy plays, cries, smiles, and grimaces in a group of candid, gloss images. Josephine Pryde’s Adoption (2009) series is comprised of pictures of a well-dressed toddler. His name-brand clothing and the environment in which he is photographed give us insight into his life, but also raise questions about choice and consumption. One by one, these images accumulate into an unsettling representation of childhood. The boy pictured is complex—he is frustrated, he is happy, he has desires. He can be manipulated, but he can also manipulate. Subject to mood swings, he can appear alternately adorable and grotesque. Necessarily passive, this child is embedded in a complex range of power relations. His tenuous position is only further accentuated by the title of the series, Adoption. For whatever reason this cute boy was given away by his birth parents, and for whatever reason, someone else now calls him their own. Through this transaction, he has become a commodity of sorts, a status that is exaggerated by his representation as an image of idealism and desire. The works extend beyond the specificities of the narrative presented, exposing the proprietary threads that infiltrate all familial and domestic structures…
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Artists
Photography, Artistic

Text

Ruba Katrib
Jonathas de Andrade
Neïl Beloufa
Keith Edmier
LaToya Ruby Frazier
Robert Gober
Tamar Guimarães
Anthea Hamilton
E’wao Kagoshima
Yuki Kimura
KwieKulik
Paulina Olowska
Kirsten Pieroth
Josephine Pryde
Carissa Rodriguez
Martha Rosler
Günes Terkol
Claudia Brandenburg
Alice Gregory