Today we’d like to introduce you to Holly Harrell.
Every artist has a unique story. Can you briefly walk us through yours?
I’m from Staten Island, the last and often forgotten borough of New York City, but I mainly grew up in upstate New York. I come from a predominately blue-collar family, so I’m rather lucky to be doing what I do. My life has been shaped by a specific national tragedy, so my process involves the constant recycling of personas that simultaneously embody death and vastness and the pastiche and memorialization of American culture. I earned my BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and at the end of my time there I received a grant from the Roger Brown Study Collection to do tours of the White House as Jackie Kennedy, but displacing locations by hosting the tours in various vernacular art environments throughout the Midwest as well as junkyards and grocery stores galore. I work mainly in video and performance, always performing for the camera. My time in Los Angeles has really shaped my practice for the better. I’m currently an MFA candidate at the California Institute of the Arts and being in such close proximity to Hollywood and other simulated environments is really rather generative. I also work collaboratively and invite other performers to participate in large scale performances I write and direct. Recently I collaborated with the project space Hosting Projects to execute the filming of the production of the planning of an event, in front of a live audience. The cast was approximately seventeen people including performers, camera crew and producers, as it was formatted like a reality television show. We have plans to host a screening once post-production wraps. Hosting Projects is an outdoor space behind a house in Venice, which is the kind of exhibition space I prefer to a traditional gallery.
Please tell us about your work.
I find myself in the middle of both critiquing nationalism and American mythologies and embracing certain aspects. I guess my process happens somewhere in the liminal space between both positions and because of the chaotic nature of having your foot in two things at once there’s always the tendency to go in many different directions, but I think there’s a system to chaos and I think that’s part of what is both challenging and intriguing about making work in the U.S. in 2019. My videos centralize around a reoccurring character and she is usually working within the confines of a tour or demonstration of sorts, at least to start, but then they are rather explosive. I specifically perform for the camera because at this point our daily lives are synthesized through television, but also through the mode of surveillance.
As an artist, how do you define success and what quality or characteristic do you feel is essential to success as an artist?
What I want is to broaden the cannon of performance and video as it has been historically, but even more so. I don’t think everyone’s end goal should be geared towards gallery or museum recognition. Don’t get me wrong, I think some are a good fit. But I think artists have a tendency to sacrifice certain things for the sake of an institution and I think it should be the other way around.
How or where can people see your work? How can people support your work?
I want my performances to be viewed live as one experience and for my videos to be an entirely separate experience with different viewing objectives. I like to involve my audience in my performances/ videos, usually by force, as I take on a sort of domineering persona no matter who it is I am embodying. I’d like to create an extension of my practice that is reoccurring and collaborative like a mobile troupe of sorts, but displacing and juxtaposing actual locations with fantasy spaces, something I often do. This will be something I work on postgraduate school.
Contact Info:
- Website: welcomehomehollyharrell.info
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/0mniv0re/
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