Ann Hamilton

Textiles and fabric are important parts of Ann Hamilton’s work, which includes installations, photographs, videos, performance and objects. Hamilton’s sensual installations often combine evocative soundtracks with cloth, filmed footage, organic material and objects. She is as interested in verbal and written language as she is in the visual and sees the two as related and interchangeable. In recent work, she has experimented with exchanging one sense organ for another—the mouth and fingers, for example, become like an eye with the addition of miniature pinhole cameras. As the 1999 American representative at the Venice Biennale, she addressed topics of slavery and oppression in American society with an installation that used walls embossed with Braille. The embossed Braille caught a dazzling red powder as it slid down from above, literally making language visible.