Sandy Skoglund (American, 1946-)
Maybe Babies, 1983
Dye transfer print
30 x 37 in
Gift of John Andrew MacMahon ’95
Taking a first glance at this strange image, the viewer can see a number of blue and purple babies strewn about the image. Not only babies crawling and rolling on the ground, the babies are floating against a dark nighttime backdrop with neon and black ribbon forms protruding from black sand. In the background, the purple frame of house contains a window lit by a warm orange light, as a seemingly unfazed man looks out the window.
Sandy Skoglund (b. 1946) is an American artist who specializes in photography, sculpture, and installation. Skoglund attended Smith College, graduating with a degree in studio art and art history, and afterwards studied at the Sorbonne and École du Louvre in Paris and then at the University of Iowa. Starting off as a conceptual artist in New York City, Skoglund became interested in photography as a way to document her projects. Skoglund’s work in the 1970s started off with an interest in repetition and color shown in the work “Cubed Carrots and Kernels of Corn,” with geometrically arranged foods over a vivid tablecloth. Her smaller studies with food laid the foundations for her larger installation works or tableaux. Sometimes these tableaux comprised of elaborately sculpted objects, such as her work “Radioactive Cats,” which similarly includes a human within the installation like “Maybe Babies.” Many of Skoglund’s works utilize installations with sculpted objects that mimic real life. She then combines them with a real person, all photographed together in one scene.
In “Maybe Babies,” the uniform, formal repetition of the babies throughout the frame is certainly creepy. In an interview with Musee Magazine, Skoglund says that sees this repetition in her work as both a “beautiful aggregate that is greater than the parts, but also the overabundance of things as alarming and invasive.” The babies in this work do feel invasive and surreal, existing colorfully in an in-between dark space. A majority of Skoglund’s work combines the familiar and the uncomfortable, exploring the feeling of anxiety through a known space juxtaposed with unknown and sometimes scary objects, like creepy babies.
– Brown Payne ’24
https://museemagazine.com/features/2020/7/15/el0tk5meznph28ttezkfsh7zur089t