Red's Cave (with Judith Josso), 2000

Two enormous widely open mouths, red on the outside and inside. Bellowing whale-like laughter coming from the two, showing all parts of the inner mouth: the oral cavity, the teeth, the tongue, the soft and hard palates, the uvula, two pairs of lips. The siren-like song is inviting, you want to look at the strangeness of such a common body part. Yet they are repulsive too. Monstrous laughter coming from them making one wonder what they are laughing at. Since the sound is in slow motion...there is an underlying tone of gravity.

In L'essence du rire, (The Essence of Laughter), Baudelaire talks of the philosopher who can laugh at himself when he falls. He is able to see himself from a distance and understand how small he really is.

In this installation, there is doubling of the mouths. Also, they are not face to face but cornered, each taking a wall. They are not exchanging but stating. And they are most certainly feminine mouths, burning red.

Excerpt from the Exhibit's Catalog:

Red’s Cave (2000) is the most imposing example of Ross’s explorations of the mouth’s metaphoric transactions. Projected onto adjoining walls, two female mouths dwarf the viewer. Their painted red lips, tongue, and throat form an enigmatic threshold inextricably linked to language, sexuality, memory, aggression, transgression, and appetite. Howling laughter, which recalls the death lure of the siren as well as the Freudian concept of the vagina dentata, generates an erotically charged physical and psychological space in which seduction and repulsion coexist.