Installation view of Matilde (for Olympia), exhibited in For Ed:Splendor in the Grass with Olympic Lad and Lass, curated by Robert Storr and Sam Messer at the Green Gallery at Yale University, New Haven, CT, 2013
The photograph depicts one of the several casts in Pablo Neruda’s house in Isla Negra of his wife Matilde Urrutia’s hand. I had recently spent time in Chile photographing his house, and when invited to participate in this exhibition commemorating the 150 year birthday' of Manet’s painting of Olympia, I came across this image in my archive - a bronze cast of Matilde’s hand, positioned like the hand of Olympia. The sculpture takes on this coincidence to materialize a connection between these women, and preserve an ephemeral gesture- the imagined imprint from Olympia’s hand resting on the flesh of her thigh. Archival pigment print, foam, plaster, steel. 2013
