REBEKAH WILSON SMITH
GROSS
Visceral disgust, perhaps humanity’s most avoided, nausea-inducing reaction, can fully penetrate any moment by a complete take over of the mind and body; such is the power of revulsion. But disgust can also be a more nuanced, subtle and intimately personal experience, not incompatible with fascination or even delight. Rebekah Wilson Smith’s Gross generates and plays with this multifaceted sensation through the transformation of familiar items and characters one may find at a backyard wedding reception into creepy crawly hybrid objects. A three-tiered cake is frosted generously with chocolate-colored cockroaches. A sparkling, be-pearled bridal gown assumes the form of a giant garden slug looking up from its lunch: a silk bridal bouquet. Gross uses the imagery of the slimy and skittering to allude to our discomfort with ourselves, our bodies, or our experience of social norms and pressures. But typical of Wilson Smith, each work, and the installation on the whole, is imbued with a disarming dose of humor. What we squirm about can be deeply personal, and open to judgement when revealed, but each of us owns at least one. We each feel grossed out at some point in time by something that persists in the face of our loathing and sense of propriety.
To learn more about Rebekah Wilson Smith’s work visit:
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For inquiries regarding the works in Gross, please email the artist directly through the form on her website
