MAYA VANDERSCHUIT

Maya VanderSchuit
‘Less a Thing Than a Trace of Movement’ 2015.
plexiglass, digital video projection.

‘Less a Thing Than a Trace of Movement’, 2015, is a sculptural video art piece exploring the performative body in relation to the California desert landscape. Digital video of the body interacting with landscape are projected upon layers of acrylic plastic. The title of this piece is excerpted from Roland Barthes’ Mythologies. He addresses the materiality of plastic, stating “more than a substance, plastic is the very idea of infinite transformation”(110). Barthes also relates that plastic is “something powerless ever to achieve the triumphant smoothness of Nature” (111). The use of Plexiglass in this piece juxtaposes the artificiality of man-made, environmentally unsound materials with the human condition and notions of the sublime natural landscape.