Maureen Connor

(Baltimore, 1947)

A Visual Artist who combines video, installation and collaborative performance in her artistic production, she is also Professor Emeritus of Art at Queens College, New York University, and co-founder of Social Practice Queens, an experimental art program sponsored by Queens College. . In the 70s he explored sculpture, creating pieces in which he amalgamated different objects. In the 90s she delves into the theme of the female body and the role of women in society. Since 2000, he has developed Personal, a series of interventions related to the art institution as a workplace, which explore the attitudes, needs and desires of the staff of various institutions. His work has been shown in places such as the MAK, Vienna; Portikus, Frankfurt; the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.

He presents the video installation Taste I at Medialab Madrid, which consists of a dining table covered with a tablecloth and placed with cutlery. Two holes have been cut in the table and two monitors have been placed to replace the plates. The monitor on the left shows a served meal disappearing from the plate as if the viewer were eating it. The menu offers a wide variety of recipes and options from all over the world, from junk food to haute cuisine. Its general purpose is an allusion to our sense of taste as a cultural learning process.
The monitor on the right shows images of different people - in terms of age, sex, physical appearance and origin - who appear on the screen trying, unsuccessfully, to eat. These people approach the lens of the screen and kiss it, suggesting a broader sense of taste as a preference or desire. She also participates with Taste II (1992), a video installation that shows a bathroom scale in which a small monitor has been inserted that simulates a bulimic woman successively nibbling and purging her food. While the scales indicate control through moderation or containment, the images represent the anxiety of unrestrained eating as a symptomatic expression of a psychosocial pathology indicative of an affluent consumer society.