Flesh
and Blood So Cheap, the second in the AIDS series chronicles
a persistent theme in the artist’s work—the transformative power
of memorial.
A debilitating loss more than twenty years before motivated Lakich to originally
turn to light to express her grief in a self-portrait that used small electric
bulbs blinking down her face as tears. She has continued explore the emotional
properties of light as an expressive tool, nowhere more beautifully than in
this work.
Light emanating from behind the abstract figure blends five different colored
and phosphor tubes to create a sunset aura; a soft, white light illuminates
the buffalo skull and a brilliant neon crackle tubes animates with a furious
life-force.
