LEESA STREIFLER

“Contained” 

Reflecting on my first digital body of work, “Contained,” 2003, my interest was in the inside/outside dichotomy – the silhouette representing the outside, external presentation of an image; that which is most readily consumed and the inside being that which is more  difficult to assimilate, but often much more interesting. This is meant to be analogous to human experience/relationships where the immediate impression of something is often incorrect and superficial. The works titled “Contained: Bunny Series” and “X-Ray Bunny,” all have a rabbit silhouette, into which I have inserted another image. My intention with this work, was to use the rabbit image as a signifier of innocence, hence the word “bunny” as opposed to “rabbit”. In our contemporary, urban culture, the rabbit image is most closely associated with benign sweetness and child’s play…. We ‘consume’ the bunny motif in our holiday celebrations imagery, chocolate bunnies, and in children’s books, to name its most ubiquitous uses. I wanted to contrast this with an image that was not so easily ‘consumed,’ an image that is psychologically menacing, monstrous; sexual, dislocated, destaabilized, and ultimately, ‘trapped’ inside the bunny.