Holland Houdek (USA)

HOLLAND HOUDEK

Website - Facebook - Instagram

Biography:

Holland’s work focuses on medical implants, the body, and embodied experience. Holland is widely published, was a finalist for the inaugural Burke Prize, and a recent recipient of the Peter S. Reed Foundation grant, and she is a former resident of the John Michael Kohler Arts/Industry Program, among other residences. Working closely with the medical industry through her five Implants Series, Holland has formed partnerships with the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, MedWish International, Cleveland Clinic, and other organizations. She holds an MFA from Syracuse University, BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Stout, and is currently an assistant professor at Nazareth College in Rochester, New York.
Holland has exhibited throughout the United States and internationally in Austria, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Mexico, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, and Taiwan.

Collection Concept:

Instrumental (Adornment)

Surgical tools of the past have long captured public imagination as objects of intrigue and macabre fascination. Whether featured in cabinets of curiosity or medical museums, these devices evoke feelings of enticement and terror regarding their purposes and what these procedures must have felt like on a living body. This series of hand-fabricated medical instruments explores these devices as objects of art. Each piece draws out the tensions between the macabre and menacing versus the whimsical and alluring, as the playful colors contrast and help to alleviate the terrifying possibilities that you are about to die. They both exist in the future by conceptualizing a new type of anatomy and ways to mend the body, while also gesturing to the historical genre of memento mori objects and design.

Hyperbolic (Adornment)

This series focuses on medical implants, the body, and embodied experience. These hand-fabricated objects glorify the highly individual and personal nature of prosthesis and surgeries, while evoking notions of memento mori and the fragile nature of the human form. Using real medical implants as inspiration, I have re-invented and exaggerated these devices for imagined bodies. The intention is for viewers to consider their own physicality and to visualize the absent anatomies implied by the work.

"Device 63B (Bone Screw Neckpiece)" - Instrumental. Neck piece, copper, bonescrew, Swarovski Crystals

"Device 103 (Penile Prosthesis Pump Neckpiece)" - Instrumental. Neck piece, copper, penile pump, Swarovski crystals, powdercoat

"Nelumbo Mastoplasty (Lotus Breast Implant Replacement)" - Hyperbolic. Neck piece, copper, silicone breast implant, Swarovski crystals

"Cordyceps" - Hyperbolic. Neck piece, copper, pearls, Swarovski crystals