“Hamilton’s work invites the viewer to question their own understanding of fiction and reality and shatters conventional concepts of race, gender, geography, and embodiment.”
Haints at the Swamp, 2014.
About:
Allison Janae Hamilton (b. 1984) is a visual artist based in New York City. Her photographic practice merges the rural landscapes of William Eggleston and Walker Evans, the elegant vignettes of James Van Der Zee, and the unearthly illusions of speculative fiction. Hamilton’s whimsical portraits comment on the haunting gaps within cultural memory and histories, filling these voids with imaginative fantasies pieced together from fairytales, family myths and overheard gossip, superstitions, sermons, archival family photographs, Baptist hymns, and cultural iconicity—a visual take on Audre Lorde’s “biomythography.” In this way, the work draws from the canons of magical realism, southern gothic literature, and the carnivalesque in order to meditate on disruption and magic in the seemingly mundane routines and rituals of rural life.
Wedding Portrait, 2014.
Hamilton’s artwork takes the form of environmental portraiture and photographic-based installation. In many of her portraits, she constructs elements of her sitters’ garments out of taxidermy—animal hides, antlers, skins, and heads. Additional icons such as lace, flowers, veils, church fans, tambourines, curiosities, and food items animate her play on cultural history and memory and toy with expectations of identity and culture against the rural landscape. At once fanciful and severe, Hamilton’s work invites the viewer to question their own understanding of fiction and reality and shatters conventional concepts of race, gender, geography, and embodiment.
The March, 2014.
Hamilton was a 2013-2014 Fellow at the Whitney Independent Study Program, sponsored by the Whitney Museum of American Art. She has exhibited in one-person and group shows in galleries such as Carol Jazzar Contemporary (Miami, FL), Rush Arts Gallery (New York, NY), chashama Gallery (New York, NY), and A-I-R Gallery (Brooklyn, NY). Her commissioned public installations include the Smithsonian Institution’s 2013 Folklife Festival and she has given artist talks and workshops at a number of museums and universities such as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Brooklyn Museum, Université Paris, The University of Manchester (UK), Columbia University, and Northwestern University. She was a 2013 Summer Artist-in-Residence at the School of Visual Arts (New York, NY) and the 2014 Artist-in-Residence at the Rush Arts Foundation. Her artwork has been featured in several publications, such as Women and Performance, Transition Magazine and Artforum.(from the website of AJH).
Porch Wait, 2014.
The Traveler, 2014.
Copyright photos: Allison Janae Hamilton.