Ellen Mueller

Value Study

3 green curtain artworks

This is a series of wall-based curtain installations exploring ideas of adornment as both an instrument of self-empowerment, and as a tool of engagement with systems of consumption. I’m interested in adornment of both the self and the home, as well as concepts of gender, performance, class, absurdity, and failure. Color, line, form, and negative space all play an important part in this body of work.

This work builds on previous projects focused on capitalism’s effect on day-to-day living, whether in terms of housing, food, work, relationships, etc. I use both recognized and altered home-goods to reference the everyday.

Green Curtain Artwork 1

Below is the second piece in the series. A photograph of the first work is printed onto a new shower curtain, and new materials and forms are arranged in front of it. Items morph and change. Layers are added and items are masked. Precision starts to get lost as scale and color shifts, mirroring out-of-control growth in other realms.

The third work in the series features a curtain with mirrored and repeating patterning from the second piece. Ideas of display, revealing, and concealing all come into play with this piece.

The fourth work in the series features a curtain with mirrored and repeating patterning from the third piece. Formally, there are new juxtapositions of scale, and new pairings.

installation