Kaari Upson (b. 1972)

Executed in 2012, Kaari Upson’s Untitled comprises nine hauntingly realistic silicone crutches. Closely related to the silicone mattresses she created the same year, cast from abandoned bedding found on the streets of Los Angeles, the work embodies Upson’s fascination with the material traces of human existence. Inspired by her own experience of being bedridden with illness, both the crutches and the mattresses represent indexical extensions of the human body, signifying the ephemeral nature of its condition. Upson’s interest in discarded personal possessions evolved from her landmark series The Larry Project, based on objects salvaged from the ruins of a house belonging to her parents’ neighbour. She relishes in the immediacy of the casting process, describing how ‘The second you start one of these silicone works they have to be finished in the same span. Nothing can be stopped’ (K. Upson in conversation with D. Fogle, Flash Art, Vol. 294, January-February 2014). In recent years, Upson’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Aspen Museum of Art, the Musée d’art contemporain, Bordeaux, the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.