Work - amanda ruppert

My work incorporates performance, sculpture, photography and video in order to explore intimacy and mortality, trust and vulnerability, beauty and repulsion - the push and pull between these interactive forces and the delicate interstices between them. My practice is fueled by the need and desire for intimacy within a world that has little to do with the word. It is a process of collaboration, which typically begins with the collection of an intimate artifact exploring the body as place of vulnerability in order to construct experiences of hyper-intimacy that can be experienced, explored and discovered.

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lick and lather, 2012

lick and lather (performance), 2012

looks at the desire for closeness that borders on repulsive through bodily experience. a used bar of soap, having caressed the body in an intimate act, is its own artifact; possessing a narrative and history in relation to its owner. by repeatedly licking a used bar of soap that has been collected from another person and spreading it on my nude figure an intimate and repulsive relationship emerges; one that explores the female gender, social norms of intimate exchange and the desperate desire to experience intimate emotional exchanges. the same bar of soap is used in each successive performance, therefore rendering the object as an increasingly layered narrative sculpture while it simultaneously embodies the documentation of the act.

strip series (performance), 2012

explores the power dynamics between artist and subject, as well as intimacy through the use of (my) nudity as an expression of trust and vulnerability in relation to (clothed) subjects. for this work friends and family members were asked to silently stand before me in a dark studio as i gradually disrobed while flashes of light intermittently illuminated the space. this process resulted in an afterimage arising between each flash of light compounding the subjects’ encounter with my nude figure until they chose to terminate the experience.

licking after peter

licking after diane

licking after nick

licking after sarah

licking after eva

licking after you, 2011

31 minutes

40 minutes

46 minutes

60 minutes of silence, 2010

is a photographic investigation of the power dynamics between photographer and subject. for this series, subjects were asked to sit for one hour before the camera for a silent photo shoot. in this silent space, the subject is both powerful and powerless, as they at once express their vulnerability and discomfort, while being in control over their own representation.