The Gun Issue - OF NOTE Magazine The Gun Issue | Page 8

GA : First , tell us about these guns . Where do they exist ?
DW : I found the images online . There are many different sites where you can send your gun in and the same way you can have your car wrapped in some kind of skin , you can send your handgun and a company will wrap it with flowers , for example . The cover of Montana Ray ’ s book is a gun that ’ s been wrapped in a flower shrink wrap .
GA : You take this complicated object of empowerment , of fear , of violence , and architecturally it ’ s a beautiful machine in a lot of ways , and you feminize it , you glitter and gloss it up . There is something rather uncomfortable yet compelling about this approach . You ’ re engaging our advertising culture , marketing , consumerism , you ’ re engaging all of these different ways that we get things “ sold ” to us . When I look at this work , I question if in making these guns so aesthetically beautiful , you are also stripping it of its power . But , there ’ s a flipside , too . If we beautify this object , strip it of its power , are we also making it more toyish ?
DW : I ’ m fascinated with how things are marketed toward women to have this feminine shtick . I have tons of gun magazines that I ’ ve collected that have these advertisements directly targeting women . They ’ re so absurd . They ’ re always talking about the gun ’ s sexy lines , the pink color , the slim fit that would fit in your tight jeans . I stand somewhere between being disgusted by that — why do we have to have sexy guns just because we ’ re women — but also , as objects they ’ re fascinating . We like things that look pretty , we like to hang these pretty things on the walls . The people who came to my show in the D . C . -area were mostly anti-gun . But still there was a real attraction to these little images of beautiful guns , which was fascinating to me .
GA : In an interview with the Arlington Arts Center , you were very careful about not aligning the work with a didactic message . What are the messages that you think this body of work conveys ?
DW : A lot of my work looks at how women are in various subcultures . We ’ re giving little girls pink guns and teaching them that this is part of being a woman . I ’ m just not sure in the long run I understand the benefit of that . When you ’ re talking about sex and violence , which historically are two oddly human things that go together , to progress we have to be very careful with how we market that . And how we say that ’ s okay . Because it ’ s really scary . When you make something pink on a weapon that ’ s meant to kill , things become associated in different ways in the mind .
I live in D . C . and the Arlington Arts Center is in Virginia , which is very pro-gun friendly . There were some people who came to the exhibition and got aggressive with me . “ Oh , so your work is about hating guns ,” they said . One woman , who has a line of clothing that ’ s specifically made for women to conceal and carry guns , wanted to do a fashion show in the exhibit space . I politely had to tell her I didn ’ t feel comfortable with that .
GA : She read the work in another way . . .
DW : Yes , some people did . The reason I did this show was to open up that conversation . I don ’ t think sex and violence are talked about enough . This is a hard thing for me , I ’ m definitely not by any means pro-gun but I do a lot of backcountry outdoor adventuring . I ’ ve backpacked through Alaska , I ’ ve been to a lot of places and been in a lot of situations , where not to say that I want a gun , but I do understand there is a place for them .
My argument is that I don ’ t think they need to be sexfitted and considered attractive to children and women . You have a tool that ’ s meant to kill . The point is to kill or to maim or seriously injure . I don ’ t think we need to take violence into a realm where it should be ‘ pretty ’ to do so . A lot of my research had to do with women ’ s guns groups and gun clubs for children . When I was doing the project , I ’ m sure it ’ s still the same now , the NRA was dumping tons of money into attracting women and children because they need the next generation of people to market to . In doing so , there was a teeny shotgun that launched for children called “ The Rascal ” and it came in seven different colors .
GA : This is a real gun …
DW : It ’ s totally real . You can buy them online . There are gun groups that show little girls with little guns and they are all pink . So , you have all these little girls shooting pink guns and wearing pink . There ’ s this insanity as to how we ’ re “ sexifiying ” violence . It makes me insane .
GA : Your work is very layered . You take the gun as an art object and then place it against a feminized
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