In this body of work by Selby Sohn and Ann Schnake, the artists push on questions of where are bodies begin, end and join each other. With limbs that extend, bodily parts remixed, and poetic prosthetics of questionable utility, they investigate destabilizing concepts of self and how to interrupt the daily claims that capital makes on the body, with an interest in recreating new flows, possibility, healing powers,  and re-imagination of other subjectivities and worlds.

​

Ann, having been a nurse for many years, thinks about the human and collective body in somber terms, reflecting on trauma's particular ability to interrupt. Her prior work is now a phantom limb, the ethereal action of aesthetic practice born out of a physical practice. She stands at a high counter reminiscent of an operating table, suturing, carving, and constructing sculptural elements for magic rooms. Wooden spoons, interconnecting human and animal wooden limbs padded with baby socks and wrapped in string, sprouting hair and found objects, are totems, tools and chimeras.  As she carves, she has an overwhelming desire to pump the honey into every room, from the artist’s studio to the county clinic to warming oceans and drying forests — or to at least feed people an empanada this month.

​

Ann, in all earnestness, embraces the work and presence of Selby Sohn.  Selby makes objects and actions on the brink of utility. She places her work in consideration of both the tech industry’s hyperbolic usefulness and in art history’s valuing of objects without utility. Her projects involve wearable sculptures that think largely about queering use. Selby questions how by performing reality, we unhinge subjectivity. Her work has a buoyancy, mindful silliness, and lively engagement of other bodies in the wearing and playing with these tools made strange. In the subterfuge of interrupting the body and thoughts of where it begins and ends, she also provokes subterranean investigations and provocations.