Video Art Considers Interaction With Outsiders

How would you react if a strange creature made of stuffed animals approached you in a gas station parking lot?

That was a question San Marcos-based video and performance artist Christina Sukhgian Houle was curious to answer in her latest work: Migration Patterns During Wartime.

Houle stitched together four costumes from ripped apart stuffed animals, put them on six people (two of the costumes were two-person costumes), and made them travel from El Mercado in San Antonio to the Capitol lawn in Austin.  

“I was surprised that people would approach the creatures and want to talk to the creatures and want to engage with them,” Houle said.  “I found that there was, I guess, a real novelty to an 'Other', a real curiosity around the unknown, and there was a lot of humor in it too.”

You can check out a sampling of the exhibit in the YouTube video above.  Her exhibit will be open to the public at the Pump Project’s Flex Space at 1109 Shady Lane in East Austin on January 24 and 25.