Film
i realized then that you had been reduced to poetry
by M.A. Harms
Mail Art
Moon Lips
by Cindy Rehm
about the art
This month’s art pairs two artists whose practices challenge the way our bodies are expected to look and to move through the world: mail art by interdisciplinary artist Cindy Rehm and a sound film by composer-performer M.A. Harms.
M’s innovative sound practice fuses the world of sculpture and sound with mannequins that are modified into musical instruments. In their sound film, the final chapter of a work they have been developing since 2018, they write to their parents about important moments in their life since moving to California, then create a looping tapestry of sound by playing four mannequin instruments, each deeply symbolic of M’s experiences.
Cindy creates visual art that addresses the complex relationship between the female body, representation, and myth. The mail art is from her collage series, Moon Lips, which takes its name from a fictional erotic book in Jenny Hval’s Paradise Rot. Cindy describes Hval’s text as “leaky and damp, with rotting apples, soaked mattresses, and mushrooms sprouting from the walls of a dank old brewery turned apartment. The female bodies in Paradise Rot are porous and fluid, they are destabilizing to patriarchy’s desire to control and contain them.”
Cindy Rehm was commissioned with support from the Eastside Arts Initiative
i realized then that you had been reduced you to poetry was co-produced by Music for Your Inbox and Boss Witch Productions, with development support from the 2022–23 Boss Witch Productions Commission, Coaxial Arts Foundation, and Human Resources Los Angeles