Artist Statement:

This ongoing installation started with a collection of voicemails saved on a cell phone. These voicemails preserved the last messages left by my deceased mother. Captured on a hot pink Razor flip phone, they were trapped there when I decided to update my service. At the time, the technology to transfer them did not exist. As I dealt with the loss of my mother, I held onto that outdated cell phone as a sort of talisman. It housed an emotional catalog of voicemails, and as long as I had the phone, I could play back the messages.

Initially the voicemails on my mother’s cellphone were both stranded on that singular phone and preserved for my comfort. This duality was the beginning of a large-scale installation titled "Intimacies of Telephony," wherein I canned over 125 telephones to preserve, collect and catalog the information held within. It continues to expand as people gift me their phones and their stories. I now have included my father’s phone in this collection as well. This work was greatly influenced by my research into the history of telephone technologies, feminist communication theory, and artists whose work resonated with my own creative endeavors. Although my work begins from a place of personal narrative and preservation, it ultimately addresses the more universal concepts of domesticity, memory and issues of communication.

In the first year of Covid-19, I then lost my father, 10 years after the death of my mother. His cell phone was given to my son to use, but my son quickly dropped it and it broke beyond repair. I had saved all the voicemails from this phone however and was able to use them in a video work, which is an expanded piece made earlier for the first iteration of this installation. Each of the collected phones have stories and those are documented on museum catalog sheets where I collage the pieces of information, both technical and personal.

Bio:

Margaret Hart (1967, Dubuque, IA, United States) is an artist creating work in the Posthuman era. She is a mixed media artist, although photography is usually a starting point, through which she addresses larger critical issues investigating gender, technology and personal narrative.

 Her work can be found in many public and private collections in the United States. Hart received her BFA from the University of Iowa and her MFA form the University of Colorado, Boulder. She also holds a PhD in creative practice from Plymouth University in the UK and the Transart Institute. She currently resides in Boston, Massachusetts.

Instagram (@margaretwagnerhart)

https//www.margarethartart.com

Press Release

Artist Page