Anti-Mater, 2023

Mark Armijo McKnight: It's a photograph of a friend of mine and she's masturbating in a field with flowers all around her.

The title, Anti-Mater, I think has so much to do with thinking about the way that women have historically been depicted in relation to the natural world. The word mater, M-A-T-E-R, in Latin it means both mother, but it also means matter. This idea of, quote, unquote, Mother Nature, for example. I wanted to make an image and give it a title that refused some of those conventions or played with or prodded this archetype in some way.

I wanted this image of her totally engrossed in self pleasure, that she's public facing but there's nothing really demure about the picture by design, I guess I say that because it could be seen as exhibitionistic, but also it's a photograph that feels like she is totally directed inward. I think typically when we think of a body vertically against dirt, covered in bugs, that evokes for us an image of death more than anything. But I think in the photograph, she's very much alive.. and I wanted her to feel like she was in ecstasy.

I think often people get really stuck on the erotic facets of my work and think that maybe I have a desire to be transgressive, which I don't. I think there's a generation of really important artists who opened so many of those doors, and so I don't feel like there's anything new about picturing sex.