Nicholas and Sheila Pye

Nick born 1976 , Sheila born 1978

Sheila and Nick Pye's work is a teetering see-saw, a complex set of juxtapositions that illuminates their intimacy while emphasizing our place, as viewers, outside their private coupledom. Yet a glimpse into their secret dream-world reveals that their works do not represent unity, per se. Instead, they are largely concerned with duality – sometimes discord, but more often, harmony.

The Pyes' oeuvre is an exploration of the magnetic attraction of opposites, and a visual depiction of the struggle to retain one's sense of self in a close relationship with another person, especially in marriage. Their relationship (at least as depicted in their art) is not one that upholds traditional masculine and feminine roles. In several of their series, Nick dons dresses, high-heeled pumps, and/or make-up. In Stasis, (2005), the artists are photographed in a grove of trees, both garbed in floral frocks as they each pull on the end of a rope – a sort of summer-camp trust exercise in which neither is signified as more vulnerable than the other.

But it is not Nick and Sheila's mere reversal – or sharing of – gender roles that is remarkable. The theatrical nature of their work underscores their view that gender itself as a construct, and their willingness to subvert these paradigms is part of an ongoing experiment in redefining – and refining – their collaborations in both art and life.

Their work is heavily informed by performance, their bodies functioning as both media and subject. Their yin-yang qualities are underscored by cinematic mise en scene that divides the two artists physically and thematically. In The Paper Wall series of photographs and the accompanying Super 16mm film (2004), they are separated by a thin wall, yet painfully aware of – and emotionally involved with – one another. In the 2005 photograph Language, they again pose on either side of a wall (this time a bathroom stall), but are connected via a shiny pink ribbon, each end held in each of their mouths.

-Audrey Mast