An Interview with Alice Maher

AN INTERVIEW WITH ALICE MAHER ALSTON CONLEY alston conley: One of the themes your work addresses is gender construction . For instance the 1994 piece Berry Dress (figure 1), a twelve-inchhigh dress covered with dozens of rose hips pinned to it, addresses the female role of child bearer. The dress decorated with rose hips is a socially constructed garment that ties the wearer to a socially approved role. But exhibited on a glass shelf, the piece reveals that the pins attaching the berries pierce the dress and prick the implied wearer. alice maher: The fact that it’s exhibited on a glass shelf is very important (figure 2). It’s displayed above the height of the viewer’s head and actually puts the viewer in a position where he or she has to look up the dress, which is a socially—sexually—unacceptable thing to do. The actual act of looking at the work would be bold, or naughty, or subversive—if you know what I mean. ac: So you look at the outside to get the first take, and then you become a social deviant in order to get the second implication. am: Well—it has an element of deviancy. You find that in a lot of my work— like Keep, the hair tower, where people are allowed to touch it if they wish. I depend on people’s inherent subversion; museums do not allow people to touch art, but people try to do it anyway. That’s what people do! ac: Yes, there’s a curiosity factor. am: Yes, the curiosity and the touch factor. I work with them in the way I present my work. When I was making that dress, around 1994–95, a lot of my work was about how one approaches objects—or approaches art. As you were just saying, when viewers get up really close, they may have to do something else to become engaged—look up the dress, or maybe walk into the tall hair tower, Keep, if they are really bold or courageous. AN INTERVIEW WITH ALICE MAHER 198 AN INTERVIEW WITH ALICE MAHER 199 ac: That leads us to the context in which your work is read. Berry Dress can be read as surrealist, because of its small scale and its unexpected, irrational combination of materials. It has a dreamlike quality. am: That is surrealist? A lot of people do apply that term when they look at objects that I’ve made. But I wouldn’t be putting objects together to merely surprise or to shock. I very consciously think out multiple meanings and associations and work with them very specifically when I use certain materials—like nettles or like flax—that already have an inherent history . I’m not just putting pins together with rose hips to shock the viewer; I’m including everything that rose hips and pins mean in historical and folkloric and mythological terms. The materials are not chosen simply for their physical qualities, but for their inherent histories, which carry multiple meanings through associations of symbol and memory. And of course the surrealists also saw the female principle as profoundly “other.” ac: The flip side is that the surrealists—men mostly—objectified or fetishized their “female” objects, whereas your work is about gender construction and the role of women in the culture. am: Well, that particular piece [Berry Dress] speaks to me more about childhood than it does about womanhood. It’s interesting that most people, figure 1 Alice Maher, Berry Dress (1994), 16 x 26 x 30 cm. Rose hips, cotton, sewing needles. (Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art) AN INTERVIEW WITH ALICE MAHER 200 figure 2 Alice Maher, Berry Dress (1994), 16 x 26 x 30 cm. Rose hips, cotton, sewing needles. (Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art) when they see the dress, think of it as a symbol of absent femininity. But it’s actually a child’s dress. ac: Yes. But the berries represent her future role in the culture as child bearer. am: Indeed. And the berries act as a kind of armor, as a chain mail; the little pins add medieval imagery in that they...