rhonda arntsen

selections from Home: The Aesthetics of Domestic Violence

I hear a car in the driveway and panic. I don’t have a driveway. It still feels like I’m coming up for air. I am reaching for a beer I keep remembering I don’t have. The edge of my hand brushes the edge of the table.

I am a bitch.

I work as a team.

I am yours.

I feel everything in shortwave. I close my eyes into traffic.

(author unknown).

Home: The Aesthetics of Domestic Violence seeks to reveal the delicate balance between survival and demise in the private physical and emotional spaces of domestic partner violence.

Through the integration of large scale photographic images, environmental typography and gazing pools in physical space, viewers will be provided an opportunity to reflect on the notion of home as an unsafe space. Work in progress.

Media: 4x5 and Diana camera film photography, vinyl lettering, laser engraved wood, water.

selections from somewhere between here and there on the road to nowhere

This ongoing body of work conceptually documents the changing relationship between a parent and child emerging into adulthood. 2017-

selections from Extra Ordinary

This ongoing body of work seeks to explore beauty and meaning in ordinary and mundane moments of daily life. 2017–

Media: Digital photography/archival inkjet prints.

selections from one half of one

One Half of one is a collection of thirty digitally recorded images representing one half of one second of real time at a shutter speed of 1/60 of a second. Snapshots recording the life of a child were deconstructed then reconstructed as digital representations intended to question, alter, rewrite, and re–contextualize the events, memories and realities that chronicle the life of the subject.

Mixed media bits and pieces

self–portrait. 2011

Domestic violence effects women of all ages, socio–economic, ethnic, cultural, educational and professional backgrounds. The graph in this self-portrait represents the outwardly invisible, unpredictable, escalating and rescinding patterns of abuse at multiple levels of violence and severity from the onset to conclusion as experienced by victims of domestic violence.

digital media
32”x 42

selections from Women's Work 2008-10

Hand–stitched samplers were among the first artifacts created uniquely by women to express their voices, document their lives, share social experiences and cultural values. This, and the following works, honor the medium and reflect personal, social and political issues of the early 21st century.

peter piper. 2009
hand–embroidery, found photography
22” x 36”

WIP: War-in-Progress. 2008
hand–embroidery
36” x 9’
As of late 2008 the estimated death toll (including U.S. soldiers and Iraqi civilians) from the war in Iraq was 659,000 souls. This canvas contains one square per soul to be stitched in honor of those who lives have been lost, sacrificed, taken.

from the series virtualities. 2001

Virtualities explores the re-contextualization of content in the vitual world. Inspired by the Visible Human project, simulated parts create a new, seemingly real whole.

digital media
32x48, 22x48

from the series nesting. 1993

Through the integration of self-portraits and domestic ‘waste’, social constructs of femininity and domestic identity are confronted and challenged.

silver print, zip-wax, pubic hair, gold 32” x 40”, toned silver print, pet hair, aqua net hairspray, 8” x 12”.