Nurse

2006-07
drawings, video

Moving the image of the Filipina nurse into something deeper and stranger: multiple narratives of gender, subservience, power, care-giving, and immigration inform this project.

The drawings are on simple green paper to suggest a standardized institutional quality. The nurses’ uniforms are heightened with white ink, rendering them otherwise invisible beyond their professional function. The nurses are situated in vague, liminal spaces, and often interact with a dough-y “goo” which functions as both flesh and border.

The videos are simple tableaux, with the nurses improvising their own narratives. A consistent, if goofy series of transgressions move them outside of pious service and into a more absurdist, rebellious place: how women might entertain themselves off-duty, horsing around, being “bad”.