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# What a Teenager's Backpack Tells Us About Art
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/amanda-ross-ho-cradle-of-filth/
- Published: 2013-05-31T13:10:59.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:01:27.000Z
- Description: CHICAGO — Amanda Ross-Ho recreated a soft-sculpture replica of an anonymous teen-girl's backpack, blowing it up to 400% of its original size.
- Author: Alicia Eler
- Tags: Art, Abigail DeVille, Amanda Ross-Ho, Claes Oldenburg, Review, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:59 (2012, 2013, part 2)

![Amanda Ross-Ho "Cradle of Filth" (2013) (image via shanecampbellgallery.com)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/05/amanda_ross_ho_install_640.jpg)

Amanda Ross-Ho, “Cradle of Filth” (2013) (image via shanecampbellgallery.com)

CHICAGO — Amanda Ross-Ho recreated a soft-sculpture replica of an anonymous teen-girl’s backpack, blowing it up to 400% of its original size. It hangs at the back of the white-walled gallery space, the focal point of her solo exhibition [*Cradle of Filth*](http://www.shanecampbellgallery.com/exhibitions/2013/146?ref=hyperallergic.com)that juxtaposes this adolescent girl’s heart-and-soul scribbled onto a backpack with a series of abstract paintings on a faded, light-blue colored canvas that mirrors that of the backpack itself. Titles like “Untitled Painting (BLINK 182)” and “Untitled Painting (HALLOWEEN NIGHT!)”suggest the emotional gushing of the backpack’s teen-girl aesthetic.

This all typifies Ross-Ho’s style, in which she often chooses found objects that embody a particular class or sociopolitical group, placing them in a gallery space, and meshing “high art” culture with a mass media “low culture” street aesthetic much in the same way that artist [Abigail DeVille](http://www.vogtgallery.com/index.php?/artists1/abigail-deville/&ref=hyperallergic.com) does through her site-specific detritus installations. A stark difference between the work of DeVille and Ross-Ho is there is not an ounce of humanity present in the former’s work; for Ross-Ho, the human presence makes this work snap and click, buckle and bend — like a nimble young girl practicing her gymnastics skills.

Ross-Ho’s work also echoes the objecthood of Claes Oldenburg’s pop art soft sculptures like “Spoonbridge and Cherry” (1985) or the giant badminton birdies of the [*Shuttlecocks*](http://www.bluffton.edu/~sullivanm/missouri/kansascity/nelsonatkins/oldenburg.html?ref=hyperallergic.com)series(1994). Oldenburg’s work acts as a disruption to Abstract Expression in the same way Ross-Ho’s giant girl backpack brings a purely teen-girl aesthetic into the art world.

![Claes Oldenburg, "Spoonbridge and Cherry."  Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Stainless steel and aluminum painted with polyurethane enamel 29 ft. 6 in. x 51 ft. 6 in. x 13 ft. 6 in. (9 x 15.7 x 4.1 m) Commissioned February 1985 by the Walker Art Center Gift of Frederick R. Weisman in honor of his parents, William and Mary Weisman Installed May 9, 1988 Inaugurated May 11, 1988](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/05/claesoldenburg.jpg)

Claes Oldenburg, “Spoonbridge and Cherry” (1988) Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Walker Art Center. (walkerart.org/garden)

In this space of ghosting teeangedom through a found object amplified, Ross-Ho’s abstract paintings envision what this teen-girl may have painted or could one day paint should she retain her fluid young-girl identity into [adulthood](https://hyperallergic.com/body-modifications-of-the-woman-born-from-the-young-girl-nsfw/). The teen girl who once owned this backpack lives on through Ross-Ho’s recreation, but the raw emotional value is drained of its original meaning and context; the permanent marker scrawlings are dry, the backpack’s zippers won’t ever break and the black buckles are perfectly unscratched and untouched by the elements. As such, this teen-girl relic has become part of the art world, christened by the four white walls that act as a rite of passage into this sanctified space.

![Amanda Ross-Ho. Untitled Painting (BLINK 182); Untitled Painting (CRADLE OF FILTH);Untitled Painting (HALLOWEEN NIGHT!).  All paintings dated 2013; acrylic on dyed canvas 24h x 18w in (60.96h x 45.72w cm)](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2013/05/photo-35.jpg)

Amanda Ross-Ho, “Untitled Painting (BLINK 182); “Untitled Painting (CRADLE OF FILTH)”; “Untitled Painting (HALLOWEEN NIGHT!)”. (All 2013) (SOURCE)

*Amanda Ross-Ho’s solo exhibition* [Cradle of Filth](http://www.shanecampbellgallery.com/exhibitions/2013/146?ref=hyperallergic.com) *continues through June 22 at* [*Shane Campbell Gallery*](http://www.shanecampbellgallery.com/exhibitions/2013/146?ref=hyperallergic.com) *(673 N Milwaukee Avenue, Chicago).*