Riley Johnson
studio art // portfolioRitual Fantasy
With a play on Revenge Fantasies, Riley Johnson looks to turn the haunting feeling after sexual assault back to the perpetrator. She does so by presenting an on-loop film, a mix of stop motion and live action. The live action disrupts the stop motion, intending to break reality for the audience and subvert expectations. These breaks, in turn, remind the viewer that while the pain and lingering memory after sexual assault is real, this is a fantasy.
Riley Johnson's practice attempts to provide comfort to those that have experienced trauma at the hands of men, and to bring discomfort to those who haven't. In this piece, Riley looks to turn back the male subject into the object, dehumanizing it and looking to stop sympathy towards the aggressor.
Riley, whose practice is centered around breaking the body as an object and concept, challenges her previous body of work, while amping the dramatics. She looks to turn what is often a disregarded experience into the center of this work, and to use art to bring together post-assault experiences that often feel isolated, but unfortunately are not.
Description written by Art Historian Esther Perez
