The Audrey Samsara ©2004

Running Time: 19:29

The Audrey Samsara is a meditative, slowly unfolding video featuring the artist’s 18-month old daughter breastfeeding, falling asleep, reawakening, breastfeeding and again falling into deep sleep. This continual cycle brings to mind the notion of the life force, hence the Buddhist word “Samsara,” meaning the cycle of death and rebirth. Drawing inspiration from renaissance painting, The Audrey Samsara echoes depictions of the Madonna and Child, as well as the Pieta, yet it is not idealized nor sentimental. Intimate and edgy, The Audrey Samsara captures the truth of the nursing experience. Ironically, in May 2004, The Audrey Samsara was censored from its first scheduled public exhibition at the New York 5th Avenue gallery of designer Salvatore Ferragamo, when a company executive found the artwork "distasteful." It has since been exhibited internationally.

Note: The Audrey Samsara was created in the widescreen, 16:9 format, and is designed to be show on a wall mounted, widescreen plasma monitor sized from 40 to 60 inches diagonal, to approximate the look of a painting, and to show the figures approximately life size. Large-scale photographs, produced separately from the video, are also a part of The Audrey Samsara series.