Altar Ego is a multi-media project that integrates painting, installation art, and the moving image. Comprised of several performances, each video features the artist engaged in activities such as strategically stepping on stacks of books to push through the ceiling, transporting water with a wooden yoke into a basin lined with holes, purchasing colored containers by cutting off sections of hair, and constructing a pyramid of canned goods. The final performance involves the artist making a regular pilgrimage to a creek (sixty-six visits over the course of a year). In this ritual, the artist stretches and ties a hammock to three trees in the creek bed, lays down, and reads a different letter from her satchel. The performances in Altar Ego were inspired by author Skye Jethani, whose writings explore common ways people view and approach God. The project probes at the underpinnings of different religious modes—life over God, under God, from God, for God, and finally, life with God, reflecting on the motivations which underlie many religious expressions.
Altar Ego: Over, Under, From, For (clip), 2017, video/performance, 5 min 25
Altared Viewing (Installation detail), Oil on panels, wooden box, 18 in x 18 in panels, 24 in x 24 in x 88 in box, 2017-2018.
Altar Ego (Installation View 1), Roger Williams Gallery, New Hampshire Institute of Art, Manchester, NH, 2018
With/In (Installation view), Oil on panel, rope, basin, water, spot light, 31 in x 31 in round panel, 30 in basin, 2017.
With/In (Installation detail), Oil on panel, rope, basin, water, spot light, 31 in x 31 in round panel, 30 in basin, 2017.
Letters (Installation detail) 66 letters, Handmade paper, India ink, 2017.
Tessa Davidson 