A Conversation with Amy Wilson
Amy Wilson: Your work in the show at No Gallery draws upon the visual language of Minimalism. Can you talk a little bit about the connection between Minimalism and horror? You’re a Conceptual artist overall, so I would assume that you considered any number of ways to visually communicate your ideas.
Maggie Dunlap: The sculptures in “Gilded Splinters” at No Gallery were very much informed by my time living in London, I speak more about this in the press release for the show, but in relation to minimalism and horror specifically, I drew inspiration from the cold and sparse agrarian landscapes of the English countryside and the folk horror films they have inspired. Mark Fisher’s The Weird and The Eerie was also an inspiration, specifically his schema of the eerie as being about subtraction and absence, landscapes emptied of people, a cry in the distance when there shouldn’t be one (“The sensation of the eerie occurs either when there is something present when there should be nothing, or if there is nothing present when there should be something.”) As much as I love overwrought, cluttered, transporting installations that verge on set design (something I look forward to revisiting someday) I also am aware of the art world’s tendency to look down upon certain genres, tastes, obsessions. I very intentionally wanted to borrow the visual language of minimalism to trojan horse the ideas central to my practice (horror, violence, folklore, etc) into a traditional art space.
These types of large, imposing metal sculptures are something I’ve come to post-covid. I spent a lot of my time in graduate school at the Royal College of Art making work or doing digital performance pieces that live online as a result of the lockdowns. I was having Zoom critiques without any access to studios or workshops, so I shifted my practice to be medium specific to the internet. Once the world opened up, and making physical work was once again possible, it was important that I take advantage of that. I alchemized my research and relationship with the internet into something that exists in space and engages an audience in a way only physical objects can.
Paper Magazine, in their interview with you, refers to your “bloodless, violence e-girl aesthetic.” I’ve been really interested in watching your career take shape, and seeing how you use your personal image on social media as a way to inform the interpretation and reception of your work. Can you talk about this a bit?
When employing my own image in my work/on social media, and therefore the interactions that people have with it, I’m trying to use an unsavory tendency people have to my advantage. The word “reclaim” has become tinged with social justice rhetoric, but my goal was to incorporate the way images proliferate —completely severed from ownership or authority— into my practice. To carefully compose an image I know will either be shared ad nauseum for its “Tumblr”-esque quality, or read as “edgy” and therefore a cancelable offense feels like a way to employ instagram users as unwitting participants in a performance. It seems like a shame to allow their passion and fervor to go to waste by fighting against it. By instead harnessing those proclivities, maybe something interesting and productive could come from an impulse which can be censorial and detractive.
I’ve also really enjoyed your website which employs a number of “retro” (early aughts) touches and its tagline which sounds straight out of Livejournal or Tumblr from that era — “The soft white underbelly of the net eviscerated for all to see.” I’ve been fascinated with internet culture from that time, but — as someone who is older — my fascination was always from the outside, but you were at the right age and right time to be in the middle of it all. Were you genuinely, unironically, into that sort of culture? If so, how did the experience of that inform your thinking around your work? And if not, what would you say your relationship to it is or was?
I approached the design of my website as an artwork in and of itself. It’s not meant to be an easy to navigate portfolio, I very much had medium specificity in mind when working with the designer to create it. Just like the sculptures embrace minimalism, I want the digital arm of my practice to embrace its digital-ness. I think our interest in that specific flavor of internet culture is probably pretty similar. I’ve never been a real gore blogger or anything, my fascination with communities like rotten.com bestgore is less about their content, but that early brand of irreverent internet humor. And the way those types of images became currency to be shared amongst its users. The various warnings, sparse design, and style of writing (“the soft white underbelly of the net eviscerated for all to see” is ripped straight from rotten) conjure things much more compelling than a photo of a bisected human body. That feeling of attraction and repulsion, the transgression that you are seeking out something you ought not to, is really what fascinates me. In terms of my own formative internet experiences, I spent a LOT of time on Halloween websites as a kid. Animatronic manufacturers, haunted houses, costumes, props, | don’t even know how I was able to sniff out all of these incredibly niche trade style sites but they have informed my practice more than anything.
There’s something about your work that I’ve been struggling to tease out — but it’s connected to horror and camp. Like, I’m not talking about something like Nightmare on Elm Street or the Halloween films; I mean more a place where my mind goes to when I read about a murder or crime or something so truly horrific it’s like, well this must be a performance — it’s like my brain won’t let me accept it’s reality. I think some of this comes out with your digital collages for the Opioid Crisis Lookbook. I was wondering if you have anything you want to say about this?
This is something I think about a lot, and is a theme most prominent in “If the Opioid Crisis Was a Haunted House.” In those digital collages I reimagined navigating the current opioid epidemic, which has claimed the lives of so many people close to me, as a first person POV horror video game. A world where you could noclip out of reality and see the unrendered game map of what lies beyond.
I think this reaction you describe to horrific and heartbreaking stories and images is inescapable. Especially if you are hearing or seeing them online, or on tv, or even on a podcast. There are already so many degrees of separation that perhaps the average true crime consumer might not be aware of. I think it is this very tendency that makes people want to police the tone or perceived sensitivity of those who choose to tell or share these stories. That’s a bit vague, but I think it is the flip side of the same coin that incites anger for the perceived improper handling of sensitive material. Maybe things which are horrific in nature collapse distance and create a slippage in logic, where they can either seem more immediate or more distant depending on the respective artist and viewer. I have never received more backlash than posting a redacted screenshot of an email from a medical examiner granting me permission to document an autopsy. There was no body present, no image at all— graphic or not, no specifics. Just a screenshot of a few sentences intimating that at some point in the future, I would possibly be privy to an autopsy. Protracted arguments about ethics and morals erupted in the comments section, I received death threats, etc. I found it fascinating. This was in sharp contrast to my first “leak” of crime scene images on reddit, which included many photos of a nude “dead” body (it was mine). There were no ethical concerns raised on the reddit forum and no questioning of the images authenticity. I don’t know if this is due to the audience, or if it’s more about people’s ability to imagine and invent the most depraved and morally bankrupt scenarios possible and then react as if those inventions are real and true and happening before their eyes.
To bring this all back to Minimalism and your work and your show at No Gallery, could you mention a bit about the imagery used in The Three Hares?
The Three Hares are a symbol or “visual puzzle” found all over the world– their provenance and popularity is a bit of a mystery (although likely due to the silk road.) In all iterations, there are three hares with one ear each, when connected it appears they each have two. I first saw them carved into church staves in Dartmoor, in the Southwest of England. It’s an ancient and magical part of the country, full of stone circles and tales of monsters. There, The Three Hares are referred to as The Tinners’ Rabbits, and are thought to be a symbol of a secret society of miners. In my interpretation, I replaced the ears with a reprisal of the spinning scythe motif that previously appeared in my work in the motorized “Reaper 1.”
Maggie Dunlap’s exhibition Gilded Splinters ran January 11 – February 18th, 2024 at No Gallery in NYC.
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