Deborah Carruthers
Artist Statement
In the same way that science attempts to interpret and understand our world and us, I believe that it is possible for art to examine the landscape of science.
My work is an exploration of the connection between revelation and individuality. As an identical twin, I have always been fascinated by the moment when people recognized us as separate individuals, despite us looking the same. I began this enquiry because I wanted to recreate that moment of discovering the individual and demonstrate how it forever changes the way we look at something.
My explorations have led me to genetics and molecular biology. While my sister and I ostensibly share a virtually identical genetic makeup, we are each, undeniably, our own person. What it is it that makes us “I”? Simply put, she is corporate and traditional, and I am not. As we grew up together, I now have a prejudice toward the “nature” rather than the “nurture argument as a result of looking into our similarities and differences as we grew up together.
I am fascinated by how genes profoundly influence what we look like - how we function, who we are. My work looks at genetic data and abstracts it, intensifies it, and applies the conventional vocabulary of art - color, line and shape - to represent ephemeral qualities that can’t be conveyed by the surface appearance of things. To quote Gaston Bachelard, “thus the minuscule… opens up an entire world. The details of a thing can be the sign of a new world, which like all worlds, contains the attributes of greatness”.
In the same way that science attempts to interpret and understand our world and us, I believe that it is possible for art to examine the landscape of science.
My work is an exploration of the connection between revelation and individuality. As an identical twin, I have always been fascinated by the moment when people recognized us as separate individuals, despite us looking the same. I began this enquiry because I wanted to recreate that moment of discovering the individual and demonstrate how it forever changes the way we look at something.
My explorations have led me to genetics and molecular biology. While my sister and I ostensibly share a virtually identical genetic makeup, we are each, undeniably, our own person. What it is it that makes us “I”? Simply put, she is corporate and traditional, and I am not. As we grew up together, I now have a prejudice toward the “nature” rather than the “nurture argument as a result of looking into our similarities and differences as we grew up together.
I am fascinated by how genes profoundly influence what we look like - how we function, who we are. My work looks at genetic data and abstracts it, intensifies it, and applies the conventional vocabulary of art - color, line and shape - to represent ephemeral qualities that can’t be conveyed by the surface appearance of things. To quote Gaston Bachelard, “thus the minuscule… opens up an entire world. The details of a thing can be the sign of a new world, which like all worlds, contains the attributes of greatness”.
