VALENZUELA: After being
awarded the Traveling Scholarship from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts,
you set out for a backpacking tour throughout the American Southwest after
having spent time exploring Alaska. What was your attraction to these places?
FREEMAN: I’ve spent a great
deal of time in the Southwest visiting family as a child. Almost all of that
time was spent on ranchland in those days. It’s an incredibly nostalgic place.
In August 2006 I arrived in Albuquerque and was overwhelmed
by the corporate hegemony that has taken hold throughout the region in regards
to the strip malls, condominiums and commercially driven artwork.
I had just come from Alaska
where I’d flown to the Katmai region, an area that had been inhabited by people
for roughly 15,000 years. I crossed over six hundred miles without seeing a
fence, footprint, or structure of any kind. The only sign of artifice were
ruinous pits from long-decomposed igloos. Alaska had never been tamed in the
way I’ve grown accustomed to expect from my culture.
VALENZUELA: There’s a
consistent use of symmetry in all four of your works in the exhibition. Plastic
toys and animal parts often mirror each other in pairs.
Is this conducive to the kind
of “taming” you mention?
FREEMAN: I’ve been very
inspired by the symmetry found in the Victorian Aesthetic. The intention of
these artists and designers was to organize natural elements as a way to invoke
feelings of invitation, much in the same way that a garden does. However, all
the flowing vines, leaves, fruits and flowers are being constrained
unnaturally, within a format often found in religious art… centerline and
balance. To me, this is just as easily an expression of dominance and control,
so I’ve chosen to use it that way.
VALENZUELA: The work entitled
“Monocultural Structure in a Field” consists of a six-foot-high tower that
contains four video monitors, all looping unblinking eyes that peek through
openings on all four sides. Plastic wheat stalks, as well as a gilded
barbed-wire fence surrounds everything.
How do you define “monoculture”?
FREEMAN: Monoculture is a
term for a farm or an agricultural region that produces only one crop. A good
example takes place in Ireland during its potato years, when every single
potato in the country was genetically identical…so when one of them caught a
disease, they all did. Another example would be the entire Midwestern
cornfield.
These sorts of transactions
with the Earth seemed to be indicative of many other things. In the suburbs for
example, everything is constructed to exclusively fit the proportions of the human
body and nothing else.
The inspiration behind the
tower came from various historical forts and blockhouses planted all over the
country during colonial times. For me, these are great examples of devices used
for both racial and ecological authority…simply by attepting to exterminate the cultures
whose agricultural methods were less one-sided than European methods.
The tower is a metaphor for
anything from the Green Zone in Iraq, to any suburban neighborhood that gets
hysterical when a coyote is spotted.
VALENZUELA: By visually
harmonizing familiar indicators of indoor and outdoor environments, is your
intention to obscure any ideological partitions between these two surroundings?
FREEMAN: I think these two
surroundings are inevitably blended together, even if our perceptions tell us
otherwise. Coming from a cultural lineage that transforms it’s environment to
live up to the requirements of the society, (rather than the other way around),
I often feel like I’m in an indoor environment even when I’m outside.
VALENZUELA: Some of your chosen objects include plastic bugs,
snakes, spiders, animal bones, claws and horns. Seeing these elements mounted
upon flowery wallpaper along with more classic elements of the home can have a
disturbing effect for some people.
Is this your intention?
FREEMAN: Definitely not, but I always find it intriguing when
people react in such a way to those kinds of things. It seems to have more to
do with the traditionally acceptable notion of “man-versus-nature” than any
actual danger taking place.
The video “Derangement in the Community” uses the
man-versus-nature literary device and celebrates that tradition. I think it’s a
very old reflex that all the wind, solar and hydrogen in the world can’t
change.
VALENZUELA: On your
business card it says “Hunter/Gatherer” for the job title.
Can you elaborate on
this?
FREEMAN: There are many
hunters and gatherers in the world today who are literally dying to keep that
profession. I admire the way it’s centered entirely on self-reliance. Having
said that, putting the term on my business card has a “self-help” agenda more
than anything else.
Mathew Clay Freeman currently lives and works in
Boston, Massachusetts
