Laura Swanson
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Laura Dan
Portraits from the "Beauty" series
Custom blankets on metal rods. 2017-2018
54” x 38”
$1500 each
Website: www.lauraswanson.com/
New York, USA
Image by Laura Swanson
Audio by Mari Weiss
Portraits from the "Beauty" series
Custom blankets on metal rods. 2017-2018
54” x 38”
$1500 each
Website: www.lauraswanson.com/
New York, USA
Image by Laura Swanson
Audio by Mari Weiss
ABOUT THE ARTWORKS:
“The popularity of mobile apps that alter identity through the virtual transformation of age, ethnicity, gender, and even species, has given rise to the use of tangible disguise in selfies, with the face mask being most prominent. The face mask phenomenon has led to the creation and use of masks designed to resemble kabuki makeup, animals, animated characters, and other recognizable historic and cultural designs. The casual and carefree nature of the selfie compels me to consider both the instability of identity and the implications of appropriating other identities in order to amuse friends on social media. In Beauty, I took portraits of friends wearing ready-made face masks to explore what transpires when selfies are displayed in a formal context. By using the visual language of Baroque portraiture, Beauty elevates and prolongs the ephemerality of the selfie to question the ease of borrowing, concealing, and performing identity in a social media obsessed culture.”
-Laura Swanson
-Laura Swanson
BIO:
Born in Minneapolis, Swanson received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2011 and her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2008. Her first solo exhibition was presented at the Laurie M. Tisch Gallery in New York in 2016. Her work has also been exhibited at the RISD Museum of Art, Camera Club of New York, and San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, and internationally at Arsenal in Berlin, Germany, Media Art Gallery in Warsaw, Poland, and in South Korea at the Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art.
In 2017, Swanson presented her first international solo exhibition at the Attenborough Arts Centre in Leicester, United Kingdom and debuted her first public art work at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, New York. Her self-portrait work will be featured in and on the cover of Anti-Portraiture: Challenging the Limits of the Portrait to be published by I.B. Tauris in 2019.
Swanson was a National Endowment for the Arts John Renna Scholar in 2008–2010, Jacob K. Javits Fellow in 2010–2011, and received a Wynn Newhouse Award from the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation in 2013. Her work is held in collection at the Attenborough Arts Centre in Leicester, United Kingdom, and the Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art in Jeju, South Korea. She lives and works in New York.
Born in Minneapolis, Swanson received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2011 and her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2008. Her first solo exhibition was presented at the Laurie M. Tisch Gallery in New York in 2016. Her work has also been exhibited at the RISD Museum of Art, Camera Club of New York, and San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, and internationally at Arsenal in Berlin, Germany, Media Art Gallery in Warsaw, Poland, and in South Korea at the Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art.
In 2017, Swanson presented her first international solo exhibition at the Attenborough Arts Centre in Leicester, United Kingdom and debuted her first public art work at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, New York. Her self-portrait work will be featured in and on the cover of Anti-Portraiture: Challenging the Limits of the Portrait to be published by I.B. Tauris in 2019.
Swanson was a National Endowment for the Arts John Renna Scholar in 2008–2010, Jacob K. Javits Fellow in 2010–2011, and received a Wynn Newhouse Award from the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation in 2013. Her work is held in collection at the Attenborough Arts Centre in Leicester, United Kingdom, and the Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art in Jeju, South Korea. She lives and works in New York.
DESCRIPTION:
Laura
A portrait of a woman's head and torso on a large black tapestry with fringed edges.
Laura wears a collar of speckled grey ostrich feathers. Her black hair is combed away from her face. A translucent mask covers her wide oval face. Thick black lines cover her brows and oval holes expose her dark eyes. Two large red circles adorn her cheeks. Tiny triangles of red accent the top of her lips. This face mask resembles classic Noh makeup.
Dan
A portrait of a man's head and torso on a large black tapestry with fringed edges.
Dan wears a black hoodie and t-shirt, and his dark hair disappears into the background. His tan oval face is covered by a translucent mask with oval holes around his brown eyes and dashes for brows over the faint actual brows. The tip of the real nose is visible above full actual lips outlined in red. Two parallel curves by the nose and mouth form smile lines. A widow’s peak is drawn on the forehead, and hair is drawn on the sides of the eyes. To the left of the mouth is a red flower with two round blossoms above one green one. This face mask resembles traditional geisha makeup.
-description by Teri Grossman
A portrait of a woman's head and torso on a large black tapestry with fringed edges.
Laura wears a collar of speckled grey ostrich feathers. Her black hair is combed away from her face. A translucent mask covers her wide oval face. Thick black lines cover her brows and oval holes expose her dark eyes. Two large red circles adorn her cheeks. Tiny triangles of red accent the top of her lips. This face mask resembles classic Noh makeup.
Dan
A portrait of a man's head and torso on a large black tapestry with fringed edges.
Dan wears a black hoodie and t-shirt, and his dark hair disappears into the background. His tan oval face is covered by a translucent mask with oval holes around his brown eyes and dashes for brows over the faint actual brows. The tip of the real nose is visible above full actual lips outlined in red. Two parallel curves by the nose and mouth form smile lines. A widow’s peak is drawn on the forehead, and hair is drawn on the sides of the eyes. To the left of the mouth is a red flower with two round blossoms above one green one. This face mask resembles traditional geisha makeup.
-description by Teri Grossman
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Opulent Mobility by A. Laura Brody is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
The Opulent Mobility license refers to the exhibit and its audio descriptions. Individual artworks are the property of the individual artists.