Artist: Brenda Mallory
Medium: nylon scrubber pad, paint, rubber cable, metal
Dimensions: 54 x 18 x 6 in / 137 x 46 x 15 cm (cropped)
Brenda Mallory lives in Portland, Oregon but grew up in Oklahoma and is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. Mallory’s mixed media sculptural works (cloth, fibers, beeswax, and found objects) are joined with crude hardware that imply tenuous connections or repairs in order to address ideas of interference and disruption in long-established systems of nature and human cultures. Benda Mallory explores identity in unique ways: as a contemporary person, a Cherokee citizen, a human being in a global environment. Through a variety of media, Mallory asks her art audience to reexamine their own place on the land, to consider colonialism’s impact on Indigenous people, and causes of migration. Zen Scrubber #3 invites viewers to consider their consumption habits, the waste they generate, and the resources they throw away. The title (Zen Scrubber #3) refers to the invisible and often underpaid laborers that create the cheap objects that we consume.
Learn more about the artist here.