Artist Margaret Meehan

My interest in horror is in its evolution and how it served as a salve or catalyst for society to deal with the fear of others. I’m not really interested in slasher films. A lot of my focus is on individuals who in the end are human. Margaret Meehan, “Q+A with Margaret Meehan,” by Rebecca Marino, Conflict of Interest, February 14, 2017

Margaret Meehan was a Texas-based artist until her recent move to Richmond, Virginia, where she now lives, makes art, and teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University. Meehan, known for her research-heavy and figure-based multimedia work, has always been interested in the body—not necessarily how it physically works or even the figure as a genre, but how bodily difference has been perceived throughout time.

For Tuesday Evenings, Meehan presents “Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde,” a talk on how her work addresses monstrosity as a kind of otherness that goes beyond dualities and instead exists in shades of gray, a slippage between the categories that society defines us by and an acknowledgement of the monster that lives within us. In this clear-eyed and nuanced consideration of the intersections of myths, monsters, and miracles, Meehan examines how we decide whom we protect and whom we should be protected from by looking at notions of gender, vintage horror, and our own blood-stained American history.

Image credit: Margaret Meehan in her Dallas studio. Photo: Rodney Rogers

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