SOFT WORK, 2011-2013

Ruby’s sprawling installation is designed to fill the room in which it is displayed, with no preordained arrangement or configuration. The supple, drooping forms fly in the face of the long history of erect, solid, and unyielding materials typically associated with monumental sculpture. Instead, the plush, stuffed sculptures follow in the footsteps of material explorations in fiber arts and craft-based practices, including Claes Oldenburg's soft sculptures, the Accumulation works of Yayoi Kusama, Senga Nengudi’s stretched wall sculptures, and Mike Kelley’s stuffed animal arrangements. With the repetition of the American flag textile, Ruby transforms this symbol of national pride into a design motif. Here, the flag textile upholsters an engorged vampire’s mouth and becomes a thinly veiled satire of the rampant, or “blood-thirsty,” consumerism associated with late capitalism. However, Ruby’s frequent reference to vampires also nudges towards the artistic field’s recuperative tendencies (i.e., the recycling, or bleeding dry, of art historical movements).