Mandy Morrison, Ridgewood, Queens, NY 2021

Mandy Morrison’s process explores how the body projects itself in varying contexts.  Her  particular  focus is on physicality; its expression, and how it’s capacity for agency and mobilization is affected by colonized or corporatized structures.

With a practice that straddles between Baltimore and New York, she generates projects that link capital and control with the politics of movement. Her interest derives from a body’s meaning, in having different forms of entitlement to public, private and mediated space. Over the years, her collaborative efforts with video and performance engage with architectural environments and include, dancers, youth groups, and local community participants. Her works have been performed, exhibited and screened internationally at festivals, galleries and museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Dixon Place (NYC), the Kunstlerhaus e.V., Hamburg, CINESONIKA in Vancouver, and the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture in Baltimore.

Grants, fellowships and residencies include the Illinois Arts Council, the New York State Council on the Arts, Wexner Center for the Arts, and the Sacatar Institute in Bahia, Brazil. A distinguished educator she has been faculty at Pratt Institute and Rutgers University, and a visiting artist at Sarah Lawrence College, the University of Minnesota, University of Wisconsin, Museum School of Fine Arts, Boston, and SUNY Oswego.

In the summer of 2021 she is performing with other artists in the work of Maja Bekan (Netherlands/Slovenia) in “Hold It Together (We Have Each Other)” at the International Studio and Curatorial Program in Brooklyn, NY developed over 2020 during Covid.

She is a 2021 recipient of an Individual Artist Grant from the Tree of Life Foundation.

The book mentioned in the interview is Underland: A Deep Time Journey, by Robert Macfarlane.

Housekeeping (Video Still) 2018 Single-channel video installation with audio Dimensions: 9’5” x 16′ Duration: 01:46 (loop)

Spirits of Promise and Loss, 2020 (Installation view) Six-channel video installation with audio Dimensions: 4’ x 40’ Duration: 02:31 (loop)