American Artist (artist)
American Artist | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1989 |
| Nationality | American |
| Alma mater | Whitney Independent Study program |
| Known for | Contemporary Art |
| Website | https://americanartist.us |
American Artist (b. in Altadena, CA, 1989) is a contemporary artist working in new media, video, installation and writing.[1] They legally changed their name to American Artist in 2013, in order to re-contextualize the definition of the term "American artist"—at once taking on the name of an anonymous term while becoming the embodiment of its meaning.[2][3] Their work, in Artist's words, focuses on themes surrounding "blackness, being, and resistance in the context of networked virtual life."[4]
Career
In 2020, Artist had a solo exhibition at the Queens Museum entitled “My Blue Window,” which included a multi-media installation and app download that enabled viewers to download information on surveillance and predictive policing.[5]
Artist's 2019 solo exhibition "I’m Blue (If I Was █████ I Would Die)" at Koenig & Clinton, New York, transformed the gallery space into a seminar room for six police cadets as a way to simultaneously explore the Blue Lives Matter movement and how this is at odds with black and brown lives.[6][7]
Their work has a history of addressing police brutality and activism, such as their 2016 piece "Sandy Speaks," in which Artist created a chatbot that imagined Sandra Bland had a means to speak from behind bars, thereby fulfilling her wish posthumously to educate black youth on ways to interact with law enforcement.[8][9]
Artist's work has been exhibited at the Queens Museum, New York;[10][1] the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Koenig & Clinton, New York;[11] HOUSING, New York;[3] and The 8th Floor, New York.[12][13] They have participated in group exhibitions including Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration, MoMA PS1, Queens, NY (2020);[14] Parallels and Peripheries, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, MI (2019); ICONICITY, Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery, Stony Brook University, NY (2019); A Wild Ass Beyond: ApocalypseRN, Performance Space New York, NY (2018) (a project in collaboration with artists Sondra Perry, Caitlin Cherry and Nora Khan);[15] Geographies of Imagination, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, Germany (2018); I Was Raised on the Internet, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, IL (2018); Screenscapes, Postmasters, New York, NY (2018); Lack of Location is My Location, Koenig & Clinton, Brooklyn, NY (2017);[16] and Off Pink, The Kitchen, New York, NY (2015).[17]
Artist was named one of the "30 Young Artists to Watch in 2019" by Cultured Mag[18]
References
- ^ a b "Queens Museum".
- ^ Greenberger, Alex (April 26, 2019). "Black and Blue: American Artist Is Redefining How We Think About Race in the Digital Age".
- ^ a b "An Artist Named Artist Finds Order in Digital Waste". Hyperallergic. February 8, 2018.
- ^ "Meet American Artist". Eyebeam. November 29, 2017.
- ^ Reid, Tiana (November 13, 2019). "American Artist Shows How Tech Trains Us to See the World as Cops Do".
- ^ "American Artist at Koenig & Clinton". www.artforum.com.
- ^ Masharani, Vijay (April 3, 2019). "American Artist: I'm Blue (If I Was █████ I Would Die)". The Brooklyn Rail.
- ^ Frank, Priscilla (September 27, 2016). "Chatbot 'Sandy Speaks' Continues Sandra Bland's Legacy Of Activism". HuffPost.
- ^ "Dignity as aspiration: The privilege of representation + the obligation to attend in the work of Amalia Ulman + American Artist". atractivoquenobello. July 21, 2017.
- ^ "Dismantling the Blue Gaze Magnus Schaefer on American Artist at the Queens Museum, New York". www.textezurkunst.de.
- ^ "American Artist by Simone Leigh - BOMB Magazine". bombmagazine.org.
- ^ "I'd Prefer Not To: 'Enacting Stillness' at The 8th Floor". Hyperallergic. December 10, 2016.
- ^ "The Watchers". The 8th Floor.
- ^ "Marking Time: Art in the Age of Mass Incarceration | MoMA". The Museum of Modern Art.
- ^ Jones, Alex A. (December 11, 2018). "A Wild Ass Beyond: ApocalypseRN". The Brooklyn Rail.
- ^ Battaglia, Andy (March 27, 2018). "Every and All: Fred Moten's Oneness as a Poet, Theorist, and Artistic Muse".
- ^ "Dignity Images: Bayview-Hunters Point".
- ^ "The 30 Young Artists to Know in 2019". Cultured Magazine.