What is my work about?
My practice spans sculpture, collage, installation, video, sound, and performance. I engage the way language performs as physical material; vibrating the air as sound, moving on a screen as text or on a page as graphic image. I highlight the slippage between the cognitive content language carries (as a vessel) and its form (the shape and weight of the vessel itself). I enact how material performs as language; I arrange elements and manipulate objects in space syntactically and semantically inviting my sculptures and installations to be read like expanded sentences.
Whether working with text, an actor, a set, or a song, I treat symbolic elements as independent objects. My aim is to disrupt the coherence of narrative experience, opening up spaces of humor, absurdity and poetry while destabilizing relationships between supposedly fixed forms.
Artist Statement
My work attends to visual signs in a way that addresses the materiality of their manifestation, decoupling language and meaning, and pushing at the dynamic relationships between thought and material. I arrange objects, manipulate materials, collage sound, and direct scenes that rupture narrative and logical cohesion. Disrupting what are often thought of as closed, fixed systems creates an opportunity for new meanings to emerge; not just a normative thing and its opposite, the point and the counterpoint, but a third, fourth or fifth category. My work throws off the imagined equilibrium of signs and signifiers, acknowledging that other relationships are always already present beneath the surface.
When working in video, a medium with a strong relationship to narrative, I like to lie to the viewer. I construct an elaborate fiction using elements that appear true, and in converse, craft fictive scenarios from snippets of “real life.” I draw inspiration from a wide variety of sources; transient bits of conversation, misspellings on Twitter, a Facebook link headline out of context, and a snippet of a 70’s pop song all found their way into the script for a new video. A current influence is linguistic strategies employed in Hip Hop music. While my work does not overtly reference Hip Hop aesthetics, I borrow from its toolkit, utilizing tactics such as odd juxtapositions, intentional mispronunciations or spellings, quotation, and repetition. These methods highlight absurdity and cognitive dissonance of living within a society that ostensibly speaks your language, but forces you to articulate yourself using tools that come already embedded with alienating power structures. A recent video work, “Seven Signs that Mean Silence,” is based on a script I wrote that employs modes of “voice” from found texts, spoken through a text-‐to-‐speech website, using intentionally “broken” language, and even total nonsense at times to re-‐infuse language with new meaning and a sense of play. Historically, such absurdist detournement has been employed by the Situationists, in punk, Dada and many other artistic contexts. I see my work in conversation with these precedents.
Much of my interest in visual language is rooted in a tradition of semiotics. Through playful reconfiguration of meanings in time and space, my work posits an ongoing creative relationship to one’s experience reading the world. In my work, words are always the shape of the letters that comprise them, the sound of their articulation, as well as what they mean. Sound is always a vibration of molecules, as well as a catalyst for emotion when organized into a melody. In both my video and sculptural works I imagine each work as a sentence of these multifaceted signs, exploding out the constituent parts into grammar and punctuation. A recent series of sculptures, “The Extras,” engages with ideas of legibility of material and signification. Abstract mounds of haphazardly glazed clay hold up signs with clear photographic images. The signs they hold refer to themselves and convey a cultural awareness, their titles (“Distracted Woman, Church Scene” for instance) imply a connection with the outside world and to an unknown narrative.
We often think of the processes associated with found material as those of detached intellect and of selection and arrangement, while emotion and imagination are associated with self-‐generated materials such as expressive painting or gestural sculpture. My process combines these methods and uses them both strategically and intuitively, disavowing the binary of the mind and the body. Placed In conversation with each other, these modes reflect the semiotic potential for reading the world in endless combinations that lies at the heart of contemporary subjecthood.
CV
EDUCATION
2013 MFA Bard College, Film/Video
2004 BFA The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
BA Women’s Studies/Film and Literary Theory, Tufts University
2002 Temple University, Tyler School of Art, Rome, Italy
AWARDS, GRANTS, RESIDENCIES, COMMISSIONS
2015
Recess Art SoHo Session Residency, NY, NY (spring 2015)
2014
Blouin Art Info Modern Painters Top 25 Artists to Watch
Lighthouse Works Residency, Fishers Island, NY
Shandaken Project Residency, Shandaken, NY
EMPAC (Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center) Commission, Troy, NY
2013
Triple Canopy Commission, Bloopers performance
Pioneer Works Residency, Brooklyn, NY
2012
Milton and Sally Avery Scholarship, Bard College
2011
Departmental Fellowship, Bard College
2010
Alula Editions, Project Grant
Creative Growth, Visiting Artist Grant
2003
Medici Scholarship, The School of the Museum of Fine Arts
SELECTED TWO PERSON, GROUP EXHIBITIONS and SCREENINGS
2014
NY Film Festival, Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York, NY, Projections
CAVE Gallery, Detroit, MI, Mickrys
Jane Harstock Gallery, Greenwhich House Pottery, New York, NY, Teen Glazed
Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York, NY, Purple States
Chapter NY, The View from the Window, Sara Magenheimer, Ryan Mrozowski, Sophy Naess
Soloway Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, LIFE, SIGNS, CEREMONY, END, screening
Cleopatra’s, Brooklyn, NY, Which arbitrary thing are you, Sara Magenheimer and Sadie Laska
ICA @ Maine College of Art, Portland, ME, Community Television Network
The Kitchen, New York, Primary Information Presents
New Shelter Plan, Copenhagen, Artist Run
837 Washington St., NYC, Bruce High Quality Foundation, Brucennial
20 Jay St. DUMBO, Brooklyn, The Whitney Houston Biennial
Living Art Museum, Reykjavik, Iceland, PLAY
Soloway Gallery, Brooklyn NY, PLAY
Museum of Modern Art, Portland, OR, A Light Spray
2013
ICA Boston, collaborative project with Amy Sillman, Boston, MA
SiteWork, Chapel Hill, NC
Torrance Shipman Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, Just Light
Brooklyn Academy of Music, Brooklyn, NY, CKTV
Court Square, Long Island City, Queens, FABRIKA, with Marley Freeman
2012
Parallelograms, artist-curated online publication, Brooklyn, NY
Recess Art, NY, NY, with Christine Sun Kim
2011
Triple Base Gallery, San Francisco, CA, Alula Editions
2010
Four Month Residency, Berkeley Museum, Berkeley CA
The Secret Society, Berkeley Museum, Berkeley CA
2007
The High Line Festival curated by David Bowie, Irving Plaza, New York, NY
2005
Suave Levendra, Philadelphia, PA, I Look at Me and 10,000 Shrimp
2004
The Vaccuum, Philadelphia, PA, I Look at Me and 10,000 Shrimp
SELECTED PERFORMANCES
2014
EMPAC (Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, Troy, NY, BLOOPERS
Meet Factory, Prague, Czech Republic, After the Future
2013
Performa 13 Biennial, New York, NY, BLOOPERS
Cage Gallery, NY, NY
Recess, with Malik Gaines and Alexandro Segade, New York, NY
Issue Project Room, with Ben Vida and Tyondai Braxton, Brooklyn, NY
AVA Gallery, New York, NY, Metal Fatigue Music
2012
MOMA P.S.1, Queens, NY, Certain Distinctions
CANADA Gallery, with Sadie Laska, NY, NY
CANADA Gallery, with Greg Saunier, NY, NY
2011
Triple Base Gallery, San Francisco, CA
2010
Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, CA, The Secret Society
San Martino Spino, Italy, Musica Nelle Valli Festival
Brooklyn Bowl, Brooklyn, NY, The Northside Festival
2008
Woulds Gallery, Oakland, CA, The Cave Show
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA
2007
CitySol, New York, NY, Solar One Festival
DGC Gallery, Montreal, Canada
Dudingen, Switzerland, Bad Bonn Kilbi Festival
2006
Saratoga, CA, Bleeding Edge Festival
ALBUMS/PUBLICATIONS
2013
Seven Signs that Mean Silence booklet
2011
WOOM/Deerhoof split 7”, Polyvinyl
2010
Muu’s Way, CD and limited edition vinyl, WOOM, BaDaBing Records
WOOM v.s Kasai All-Stars, Tradi-mods vs. Rockers, Crammed Discs
2009
Draw it in the Dark, DVD of artist-made music videos and 7″ record, Menlo Park Recordings
2008
7″ Backwards Beach/The Knife, Fertile Crescent, Menlo Park Recordings
Faces of the Night, Flying, Mill Pond Records
2006
Just-One-Second-Ago-Broken Eggshell, Flying, Mill Pond Records
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
2014
Critics Pick, A View From the Window, Art Forum, July
First Look, Sara Magenheimer, Art In America, June/July
2013
Feature, Artists to Watch, Modern Painters Magazine December
Artists to Watch, BLOOPERS, ArtFCity, October 13
Performa 13 Aims to Turn All of New York Into a Stage, Wall Street Journal, November
2011
News Feature, Bearing Witness: A Week of Performance at Canada, Art In America, Dec 16
2010
Feature, BUST Magazine, Oct-Nov Issue
Feature, Muu’s Way, Brooklyn Vegan, May 19
Interview, Anika in London, June 21
Interview, Microphone Memory Emotion, June 25
Lauren Beck, Muu’s Way, The L Magazine July 21
John Norris, Muu’s Way, Noisevox, July 3
Alexander Tudor, Drowned in Sound, Plan B, London, June 6
Jude Clarke, Line of Best Fit, Plan B, London, June 6
Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?, Death By Audio June 26
IMPOSE Magazine, Music Hall of Williamsburg, July 7
Brooklyn Vegan, Music Hall of Williamsburg, July 6
2007
Collin Anderson, review Just-One-Second-Ago-Broken Eggshell, Indie Workshop, March 6
2006
Etan Rosenblum, review Just-One-Second-Ago-Broken Eggshell, Prefix Magazine, May 9
Todd Burns, review Just-One-Second-Ago-Broken Eggshell, Stylus Magazine, June 30
Grant Capes, review Just-One-Second-Ago-Broken Eggshell, Indie Workshop, June 26
Jeff Terich, Trebelzine, Album of the Week, Just-One-Second-Ago-Broken Eggshell, May 16
Jessica Suarez, CMJ Magazine, New Music review Just-One-Second-Ago-Broken Eggshell
2005
Ilana Horowitz, review Flying EP, Aural Minority, June 5th
2004
Roberta Fallon, “Sketches,” featuring videos “10,000 Shrimp and “I Look at Me,” Philadelphia Weekly, January 5th
Mickrys
Seven Signs that Mean Silence
Nothing Comes from Talking (But Sound)
One Vast Focus