Elizabeth Presa “Milk River”
October 18 – November 9, 2002
My sculptures are offered as readings of three texts published in French by Galilée: Fichus by Jacques Derrida, Papier Machine also by Jacques Derrida, and L’Intrus by Jean-Luc Nancy.
My readings become a making in which the material presence of the text emerges as an image, an accretion of simple gestures. Gestures of pouring and dipping, washing, crushing, unfolding, threading and unthreading, binding and scrolling are repeated and multiplied in my studio by the Seine. These actions make visible a desire – my desire to draw in the words of these writers, in their language. Here milk becomes a material and substance for sculpting; a white illumination; a way of feeding from a language whose mouth my mouth can hardly find. Milk denotes a quiet and nauseous longing to drink from the richness of this language; a longing spilling over time, continents and oceans that now fills this gallery.