AC Carter

Region: South

I recombine and recontextualize consumer products, fabricated garments, and kitsch-based craft materials through stacking, dressing, styling, and painting. I draw influences from pop culture, splicing together anything from green/sustainable aesthetics to art-historical references, with a contradictory attitude of irony and sincerity. I make modular arrangements that can be presented in many different ways, either on the body, through performance, in a photograph, or in physical space. I deal with concepts of gender, subversion, and transformation. Combinations are personified as androgynous, anxious, and complicated characters who long to speak out on center stage rather than be lost in the choral voice, and yet are discordantly advocating for inclusivity and democracy. By balancing, draping, and breaking my own systems, I constantly question ideas of sexuality, vulnerability, and uncertainty. My work is a process and an extension of my ethics, one that is open to learning, conversation, and the unknown.