Lineage
Susan Krause

While an art student I held two distinct occupations, one as a surgical instrument technician at a hospital where I often had the opportunity to observe procedures in the operating room, including plastic surgery. The other, a commission sales position for a major department store where I observed the power and shallowness of consumption in the quest for promised beauty. From these somewhat ordinary occupations I have found substantial resources for this body of work. Adding to this, my father was diagnosed with a progressively disfiguring and terminal skin disease. Over the years of his illness, I was able to see the reaction to the changes in his appearance by the general public and his resilience in overcoming predetermined judgments regarding his disfigurement.

I am fascinated by the overwhelming desire we have as a society to publicly change our bodies to become less authentic, to resemble what society defines as beautiful rather than acknowledging the aesthetics of what is a visual record of a life. My current work deals with our overwhelming cultural desire to change our authenticity. Rather than accepting what Mother Nature gives us - our authentic visual selves, we embrace aging and how the body documents a life over time as a flaw. My work is a reversal of that cultural trend, were instead of amplifying imposed artificiality on the real body I am creating prosthetics of authentic physical features on artificial skin of women over 40. Each feature is determined and chosen by the individual to reveal what they feel is part of their identity and shows their life experience. The "skin" castings are from women in Canada, the United States and Mexico who have had no elective surgery.   My interest lies in "wearable vicariousness" (like walking in someone else's shoes) that examines ranges of history documented by the body and in a way to create a strange form of portraiture. Each item has a DNA imprint due to the process and is tattooed on the inside, (which embraces self identity) with a name, number (D.O.B.) and specifics regarding the original "wearer." The eclectic women in the series range from business owners, nurses, hippies, mothers of 6, strippers, paraplegics, cancer survivors, the niece of Evil Kenivel and others. Currently 50 are in the series and hang on a series of steel laundry lines to emulate wore/washed clothing.   Lineage will continue to grow in size to approximately 200 prosthetics and will be hung in numerical order according to age.