Tricia Moreau Sweeney

(b. 1974, resides in Chicago)

IMAGES FORTHCOMING

In a number of distinct but interrelated photographic series, Tricia Moreau Sweeney explores the terrain of human relationships, interrogating divisions between public and private life and representations of gender relations. The untitled images in the Public Displays of Affection series explore moments when eroticism and aggression overlap, highlighting the tension that is created by moments of physicality in public settings. These photographs depict pairs of bodies intertwined in the street or in urban back yards, but it is not quite clear in each case whether the artist has stumbled upon a spontaneous, passionate embrace or found herself at the site of a violent brawl. Sweeney is interested in the intimate contact and sexual ambiguity that is involved in physical fighting, and the emotional valence of these struggles is difficult to determine. Although most of the photographs in the series offer a vantage point that brings the viewer close to the action, some of them are photographed from a distance and reveal spectators passively taking in the scene. Mirroring the viewer’s position in these narratives, these spectators represent, as Sweeney has remarked, “our willingness to look without feeling.” At the same time, many of these images are set against varied domestic backdrops and momentarily destabilize notions of privacy and appropriate behavior. In one image, for example, a couple is pressed together against a chain link fence, fully clothed but tangled in a sexually suggestive position. Visibly only from behind and situated within the confines of their yard, they strain against the fence as if physically testing the boundaries of public and private space.

Tricia Moreau Sweeney completed a B.F.A. in Photography and Art History at the University of Houston, and an M.F.A. at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she is currently a Teaching Fellow in the School of Art and Design.