Remember Lot’s Wife…
1997
Salina Art Center, Salina, KS
9 x 12 x 5 ft. Site-Specific Installation. Multiple media: 2,500 lbs. of rock salt, two photographs printed onto translucent photo paper, glass tears. This piece revises the traditional construction of women’s roles in our culture, particularly women who are portrayed as selfish, worldly, or evil. This is the case of Lot’s Wife, for whom the act of looking back invoked the punishment of death. The central element is the grouping of two enlarged photographic images of the front and back of a woman who appears to have been pushed against a piece of glass. The body is entrapped and empowered simultaneously, by occupying the entrance to the building. Salt is used as a reference to the geological past of Salina, as the landscape from which Lot’s Wife emerges in a moment of courage, or, into which she disappears in a moment of doubt.
