Senatus bestia, senatores boni viri
Found steel, latex, blood, audio 2:18 looped, 2.7 x 2.55 x 2.7m (variable)
"Senators are good men, the senate, on the other hand, is an evil beast." This Latin wisdom is attributed to the Ancient Roman philosopher, lawyer, and scholar Marcus Tullius Cicero, and kept alive through by Carl Jung’s theories of analytical psychology.
Through deft material choices, Watters’ explores the tension embodied in this statement between powerful societal structures that dictate access, power and choices for individuals.
She draws on the work of seminal conceptual artist Eva Hesse who moved raw material from the frame into space. In Cindy Nemser’s influential Art Talk : Conversations with 12 Women Artists, she outlines Hesse’s exploration of duality: Hesse “transformed the geometric into the organic, the rigid into the flexible, the detached into the personal, while constantly eschewing any tendency toward the sentimental by painting an intellectual awareness of the task at hand."
Similarly, Watters’ exploits the tension between two points: structure and individual, soft and hard, rigid and flexible, decay and preservation, old and new, and light and dark.
