Valerie’s studio will be open to the public on Saturday, April 30 from 2 PM and Sunday, May 1 from 11 AM to 5 PM.

47 Leffer Hill Road, Flemington, NJ 08822

(212) 227-7055

People have used fingerprints for mark-making since the earliest recorded days of civilization. Yet fingerprints today are far more likely to be used for marking others than for stamping a claim of ownership or creation. They are most widely employed by the police and forensic labs, banking institutions, and government health services. Of course, interpreting these prints is an art in itself. And for all their apparent individual information, fingerprints tell us nothing about gender, age, race, income, or anything else about a person that can be used for enforcing social constructs that define categories of oppression.

Where fingerprints were once used as a symbolic action of pride, they have now become a passive action—we are fingerprinted. I am interested in bringing humanity back to the fingerprint—whether in obsessive repetitious patterns or the intimate setting of a personal bureau that houses our second skin.

The fingerprint work in this series is created with my right index finger. Each print is catalogued with the date it was created beneath it. The work revolves around identity—identifying and categorizing people into groups and subgroups within society.

It is the notion of a fixed self or our identification of others that I am challenging by the use of color, shape, and pressure of every print I create—along with its accompanying date.