Amble; cast concrete, reclaimed metal, and glow-in-the dark pigments; 9 X 10 X 4.5”;2022
CAROL BORAM-HAYS
Artist Statement
Many of us think that we live in a post-industrial age. Though industrial production has moved beyond the eyes of many of the people who consume goods made this way, it continues to exact the same environmental and human costs on the communities in which manufacturing is located and the locations where raw materials for these processes are obtained. Moreover, as the cycle of consumption and obsolescence has become increasingly rapid, the cast-offs from this disposable lifestyle is leaving our natural and human resources abused, our environment polluted and degraded, and our lives increasing divorced from the natural and real.
In an attempt to adapt to the onslaught of changes being done to the environment by humans, nature is increasingly creating hybrid forms that fuse the man-made with the natural. Organisms are evolving to permit artificial compounds in their bodies. Mollusks incorporating plastics into their shells, organisms evolving to tolerate former poisons, and animals that use refuse to create their homes are just some of the modifications nature is devising. These hybrids are like many of products we consume – are simultaneously compelling and toxic. Using these new life forms as inspiration, I use metal remains reclaimed from industrial sites and cast them within concrete, and then to color their surfaces. The uncanny forms are intended to suggest an animated fusion of the organic and the industrial. The colors are meant to evoke the natural changes that are happening to these materials. I also work on installations and sculptures made with materials such as steel ductwork, conduit and electrical wiring which are associated with our contemporary architecture. Like these hybrid organisms, many of the environments that we exist in are mutant hybrids of simulacrum of past, present and future; and the natural and the manufactured. All of these hybrids represent an artificial reality that is a hallmark of our anthropocene age.
My work is an exploration of the future legacy of our current lifestyle and its effects on our world. It is my way of making peace with the post-industrial legacy that I have inherited and trying to reveal the widespread environmental costs that continue to be part of our lifestyle.