Butterfly Affective )):(( Re-Dressed & transFormed Legacies

A soundscape quietly accompanies five paintings. The installation was exhibited in Frankfurt am Main, Germany as part of Städelschule’s group show Rundgang 2022. The paintings transform masculine archetypes by layering, integrating, and dissolving these images onto themselves in natural environments influenced by the four elements (water, fire, earth, and wind), a metaphor for the feminine. A soundscape fills the room in waves, undulating between an ungendered chorus, the four elements, and near silence. The sound piece extends the paintings into another sensorial experience, surrounding the viewer underfoot, reflecting the same process used to create the paintings. The transitory setting is slippery and elusive. All at once the bodily and physical world are undistinguishable in their activity.

On one level, this work questions the stability of an archetype over time, choosing to imagine archetypes as malleable and personally defined. On another level, it approaches the same stability of patriarchal legacy, offering a more personal narrative. My name, Clyde, was a childhood nickname dubbed by my father and paternal grandfather. I asked my father, a scientist, to respond to the paintings in prose. These writings were read and recorded by my father and me (imitating him in sync). The voices merge, having been altered to be ambiguously gendered, neutralized with effects and layered. By having my father participate in the project, we engage and reconcile our subjective differences. The legacy of creation is not handed down, like my name but rather coexists, as a collaboration. The artist and father converge in a process of adaptation and integration, not erasure or domination. A transformative action.