Sienna Shields
Sienna Shields | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1976 (age 49–50) |
| Alma mater | Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon |
| Known for | mixed-media artwork, the Yams Collective |
| Notable work | Good Stock on the Dimension Floor: An Opera |
| Style | Abstract art |
| Website | siennashields |
Sienna Shields (born 1976) is an American abstract artist specializing in large-format collage pieces. She was also the chief organizer of the HowDoYouSayYaminAfrican? artist collective and the director of its digital work, Good Stock on the Dimension Floor: An Opera which was accepted for the 2014 Whitney Biennial.[1]
Early life
[edit | edit source]Shields was born in Alaska in 1976. Both her parents were teachers and she and two siblings were home-schooled for a time while living outside Anchorage.[2] She graduated from Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon with a degree in Caribbean and Latin American history in 1998.[2] in 2002, she moved to the DUMBA collective in Brooklyn.[2]
Artistic style
[edit | edit source]Shields's working process has been influenced by the "energy and chaos" of the collectives in which she lived for much of her working life.[3] Many of her works are variations on collages of acrylic paint and multiple layers of cut or torn paper, assembled into large abstract pieces.[2] She developed this working style after college in part due to financial restraints.[3] Other works include bead sculptures, mixed media art, and digital imagery.
2014 Whitney Biennial
[edit | edit source]The Whitney Biennial of contemporary art is an invitation-only exhibition which generally favors young artists and in the past helped bring greater recognition to artists like Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock and Jeff Koons.[4] The Biennial has often faced criticism over issues of privilege, access and inclusivity.[5] Shields organized the Yams Collective (short for HowDoYouSayYaminAfrican?) of 38 international mostly black and queer musicians, poets, actors, writers and visual artists to create a digital film about racial identity for the 2014 edition.[1] Shields was encouraged by this diversity, saying: "I’d go to art events, and I’d be the only black person in the room — here in New York. It was ridiculous."[1] One of the Biennial's curators, Michelle Grabner, had visited Shields in her studio and seen a short video loop she had made in Alaska.[1] This became the instigation for the collective's submission, a 53-minute digital piece in 35 parts titled Good Stock on the Dimension Floor: An Opera.[1]
Despite the collective's membership, one of the few individual black female artists invited that year was "Donelle Woolford", a creation of Joe Scanlan.[6] Scanlan, a white, male, Princeton University professor hired a succession of actresses to play "Woolford" at events. The inclusion of this "fake" artist led the Yams Collective to withdraw their submission, objecting to "Woolford's" inclusion in a show alongside their work.[7] Shields explained the withdrawal was due to not only Scanlan but also:"...the history of the Whitney and its lack of any kind of initiative in changing its white supremacist attitudes."[8] The collective also considered the inclusion of Scanlan to be a reflection of larger issues of racism in the elite art world.[9] The film instead premiered at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival.[10]
Other notable exhibitions
[edit | edit source]Solo exhibitions
[edit | edit source]- July 11-September 12, 2009, The Other Line, Brooklyn, Superfront Gallery Artist in residence exhibition[11]
- January 7-February 6, 2019 Invisible Woman, Chicago, Kruger Gallery[3][12]
Joint and group exhibitions
[edit | edit source]- November 6-December 20, 2009, Francis Young & Sienna Shields, Berlin, Kuma-Galerie.[13]
- November 8, 2012 – March 10, 2013, FORE, New York, Studio Museum in Harlem [11] reoccurring group show survey of the work of contemporary young minority artists of importance.[14]
Personal life
[edit | edit source]Shields married fellow artist Chuck Close in 2013[15] and he included her as a subject in his 2017 series Subway Portraits although they had by that time divorced.[16]
See also
[edit | edit source]References
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External links
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- 1976 births
- Living people
- 21st-century American women artists
- American photographers
- Artists from Alaska
- American contemporary artists
- African-American contemporary artists
- American activists
- American political artists
- Artists from Brooklyn
- Lewis & Clark College alumni
- 21st-century African-American women
- 21st-century African-American artists
- 20th-century African-American artists
- 20th-century African-American women