Jessica Posner

Highly Functional and What is Medea? are installation and performance pieces that open a conversation on the agency of feminized objects, gesture, representation and voice through a specifically feminist, queer and feminine visual language. 

Highly Functional is a series of mixed-media sculptures situated on a platform. Each incorporates synthetic women's shape wear such as compression garments, girdles, control-top panties, bras, and hosiery. These objects are sculptors, shaping the body into a smoother, curvier and more desirable version of the woman one may wish to be. These objects work to define who we are—not just physically, but subjectively. We have entered the language of things. Or have we?

What is Medea? is a performance piece in which I sing songs that blur the relationship between women as objects and relationships as things, while holding poses found in classical sculpture and Renaissance painting. For the MFA Fine Arts Thesis Exhibition at The Kitchen, I performed an interpretation of Ella Fitzgerald’s version of Cole Porter’s “Just One of Those Things,” on the platform among the sculptures.

www.jessicaposner.com