A line-based network of paracord and PVC tube represents the cloud of social identities and categorizations that individuals inhabit. The term intersectionality encapsulates the effect of how complex and cumulative aggregations of identities result in different forms of discrimination. Identities are not always simple and clear cut, some changing over one’s life and others static. Categorizations combine, overlap, and intersect illustrating a complex aspect of social construction and lived experience.

285 lines of paracord and 110 PVC tubes give form to this interactive sculpture. Intersections appear, disappear, and reformulate as viewers circulate around the piece, illustrating the complex social topic. At once didactic and intuitive, viewers configure and reconfigure intersecting identities through perspectival shifts and movement leaving the experience with an enhanced understanding of the subject.

This piece was installed as part of a public art exhibition sponsored by the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health. Though temporary, this spatial experimentation laid the formal and conceptual ground for later permanent public art installations that grapple with unseen networks in society through line and node based sculptural expression.

Collaborators