 |
 |
DESIRÉE HOLMAN: HETEROTOPIAS
September 15th – October 15th, 2016
Project description
Desirée Holman’s work attempts to occupy British anthropologist Victor Turner’s notion of liminality, a transitional state of ritual wherein participants fully engaged in performance inhabit a series of new, hybrid identities.
The artist’s multi-sensory work positions theatrical tools, like costumes or props, in settings that illuminate ideas of identity, knowledge, and the complexities of the human psyche.
For the video triptych Heterotopias, Holman asked nine performers to channel fantasy narratives and personal desires to create an avatar, or surrogate identity, which she then realized, first with props and costumes, and then with fully rendered 3-D models in a virtual gamescape.
Image credits: Desirée Holman, video still from Heterotopias, 2011.
Photos: Guy L’Heureux
Desirée Holman is an artist based in Oakland, California. Holman holds a Masters degree from the University of California at Berkeley. Earning critical acclaim for her work, Holman was awarded a San Francisco Modern Museum of Art SECA award in 2008 and in 2007 the Artadia: The Fund for Art and Dialogue award. From 2016-2017, she will be returning to SFMOMA as a fellow in the Film & Performance Department with a new works commission. Solo exhibitions of her work include the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (2009), Montreal’s Centre des arts actuels Skol (2016), Denver’s Black Cube Nomadic Museum (2015), and the Berkeley Art Museum’s MATRIX program (2011). International exhibitions of Holman’s work include the Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art, Berlin’s Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Milan’s BnD, and Toronto’s YYZ. Reviews of Holman’s work appeared in numerous publications including Artforum, Los Angeles Times, NY Arts, Artillery, San Francisco Chronicle and Artweek. Her work is represented by Aspect/Ratio in Chicago.
Text by Elizabeth Thomas
|
|