Shana Moulton’s work addresses the promises and disappointments of self-care culture and New Age healing, capturing the complexity of our collective desire to feel better. For all their gently humorous critique, these works also reflect on the realities of aging, isolation, and the pressure in a neoliberal society on individuals—and specifically women—to achieve a uniform perfection in body and mind.
Whispering Pines is a long-running video series featuring Cynthia, a simultaneously upbeat and anxious figure who engages with different aspects of the wellness industry. In this, the tenth installment, she turns to physical therapy in attempting to gain relief from a pain that is ultimately revealed to be cosmic. Moulton describes Cynthia as “stuck in a loop of dying and then being back in her normal home, overcoming, transcending, or dissolving, and then repeating the loop.” As such, her apparently everyday struggles express a deeper anxiety around individual identity in a secular, atomized, and neoliberal society.
