Ultraviolet
This page avoids major plot turns, twists, and ending details. It’s designed to help first-time viewers decide if this movie is right for them.What counts as a spoiler can vary by viewer.
Ultraviolet culminates a body of work (collage, animation, and pre-cinematic optical toys) that glows under blacklight, uniting my previous work in posters and textiles with my ongoing sublimation of art and craft. Somewhere between psychedelic posters and neon-stained glass windows, each quilt mourns a loved one who experienced addiction before their death. The flat quilts and screens seek impossible comfort. The patterning of collages echo the [de]formation of habit, central to the experience of addiction, not just to substance but labor itself. The repetition of the circular discs (phenakistoscopes) and looping animations relapse on repeat. The still works provide the basis for “animation”: exuberant yet mournful in pace, animating life and also grief. From fluorescent rocks in Franklin, N.J., to the glow décor aesthetics of Party City, Ultraviolet is a collision of the real and replica, revealing the vast unseen complexities of the human experience, what is invisible to the sun.