CROSSING A LINE

It is a strange and profound world we occupy as we prepare to enter the new century. Issues of identity have shifted as new technologies bring into question much of what we thought we understood about ourselves and our place in the world. As an artist, I try to find those liminal spaces where the personal and profound come together; where boundaries shift and nothing is quite certain. As an adoptee I spent most of my life caught in the transitional state between knowing and not knowing. For years my work has broached the boundaries of my own identity along with larger social and cultural questions. I have wandered over many lines, sometimes working in the private realm, sometimes very publicly. The millennium seems to have sparked a mass crisis of identity that in many ways mirrors my personal search. This has led me to explore the connections between my own experience and what we all face at this moment in time.

These windows are also a space of unclear boundaries: a space we are invited to experience but not to enter. They are a place of desire, a place to show us what could be ours, what may be unobtainable. This project is an attempt to explore that transitional space that we all straddle. It makes no claims toward providing answers, but hopefully raises a few more questions.

Carol Flax is an artist and educator living in Tucson, AZ. She has exhibited internationally and her work was part of “Iterations” at International Center of Photography and “TechnoSeduction” at Cooper Union. Carol has an MFA from California Institute of the Arts. She teaches in the Department of Art at the University of Arizona in Tucson.•

Additional examples of Carol Flax's work are available from the following sites: Ex/Changing Families and Mortal at the California Museum of Photography, and Sometimes at the Mint Museum of Art.