Angela Willetts
Artist Statement
I have an impulse to touch things with my body. It is a simple desire for connection - with a forest, a body of water, a sheet of plastic, a lump of dough, my own child. Thinking through and with my body is vital to my work. I learn by tracing, holding, wrapping, tearing, eating, wrestling, mimicking, surrendering. Dialogues emerge as I agitate the boundary between self and Everything Else in an attempt to collapse the distance between us. It is always a struggle, and I generally fail. But the desire for Entanglement persists.
I wrangle my bodythoughts in a variety of mediums, including performance, video, drawing, and textiles. The work is informed by phenomenology, ideas of agency, intra-action and “becoming with” as proposed by feminist scientists Karen Barad and Donna Haraway. It is also informed by the work of Buster Keaton, and the work of motherhood – which are, at times, indistinguishable.
While At Headlands
Headlands offers an opportunity to place my body into new and unknown environments and see what happens. Until now my work has focused primarily on material/body interactions within the neutral space of my studio. I hope to venture beyond those white walls to the buildings, grounds and nearby environs of Headlands, to make sitespecific reactions through performance, video, drawing, and installation. As always, my approach will be open-ended and experience-based, guided by the chosen materials and the moment-to-moment dialogue between us.
Selected Works
Getting Into Nature, 2016; digital video, 08:43.
Painting By Proxy (Or Harnessing The Power Of Your Outer Child), 2017; digital video, 11:42.
Walking on Water, 2016; digital video, 02:57.
Reclining, Nude, 2015; digital video, 06:52.
