Vanessa German
So many dead black bodies, 2014.
About:
Working out of her house in Pittsburgh, German crafts beguiling sculptures she’s dubbed “power dolls,” from items otherwise doomed for a trash heap: collections of spoons, for instance, or the old, glittery high heels of a drag queen. She also acts as a sort of den mother for the neighborhood kids, whose constant visits to her porch to watch her work led her to establish an after-school studio down the street. (quote Huffington Post 10/14)
Dried Beef, 2014.
Play Things, 2014.
Stop crying already, 2012.
Vanessa German is a visual and performance artist based in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Homewood. Homewood is the community that is the driving force behind German’s powerful performance work, and whose cast-off relics form the language of her copiously embellished sculptures. She is the founder of Love Front Porch and the ARThouse, a community art’s initiative for the children of Homewood. Her work is in private and public collections including Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The Progressive Art Collection, David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora, The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Snite Museum of Art, among others. German’s fine art work has been exhibited widely, most recently at the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Ringling Museum of Art in Sarasota, FL and in the traveling exhibition State of The Art: Discovering American Art Now, which originated at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR and is currently on view at the Jepson Center for the Arts in Savannah, GA. Her work has been featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR’s All Things Considered and in The Huffington Post, O Magazine andEssence Magazine, among others. In 2015, she was a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant. Her upcoming solo exhibition i come to do a violence to the lie will open this summer at the MATRIX galleries at the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, CT.(text and courtesy Pavel Zoubok Gallery New York)