ABOUT
@bu_graphicdesign
@bostonpainting
@pmp.bu
@bostonsculpture
@buvisualnarrative
she/they
Mae-Chu Lin O’Connell
My practice is a navigation of the discomforts, misalignments, and frustrations that I experience in life. Through crafting various personas and implementing pseudo-therapeutic measures, I attempt to address physical and mental disturbances in ways that can seem exacerbatory.
Literal is my conceptual native language, the mother tongue of the instructions I create and follow. I self-stimulate to the point of exhaustion to achieve the feeling of productivity; enervating myself in the highs of container-construction elicits satisfaction even if temporary. Cherishing said containers, I derive comfort from finding homes for objects/collections/feelings/moods. As such, these receptacles are built in some cases physically and others within the confines of my mental palace.
These organizational tendencies infiltrate my productive processes, including the corporeal: hair and other bodily products make appearances in many of my performances and apparatuses, whether merely collected and en-vesseled or transformed for a purposeful device.
In an effort to ensure proper communication of instruction, theatrics become a method of information distribution and preservation. Though she is a persona to whom I can divert culpability, the actor I become is nonetheless plagued by insecurity, perpetually in pursuit of an existence without disappointment, without fear, without grief, without FOMO, without cringe, without burnout. Introspection is key, yet I do not wish to over-think/act/react/eat/promise/do-it, nor navel gaze.
The alter ego aids in my pursuit of happiness and discovers that joy is not merely the avoidance of the anti-joy; it is the overarching goal of life and therefore the mission of the artistic practice; for artmaking must supplement the mental diet.
Video performance with
cosmetic products and construction tools,
dimensions variable.
(“I don’t want to take Adderall today”), 2023.
Video recording and mixed media device,
dimensions variable.
Video performance with traditional hand-pulled noodles, dimensions variable.
Artificially-enhanced text in ink on copy paper, dimensions variable.
One-hour live performance with salvaged Boston University shower unit, video projection, water, soaps, lotions, bath bombs, spa masks, beverages, flowers, candles, towels, assorted self-care items, and cleaning supplies,
dimensions variable.