I’m so curious about the world and its surfaces — there are so many spectacular glossy surfaces, on objects, on people, and all available for a great price! I love to look at food and discount bins and celebrity personalities and plastic packaging. It all seems so frivolous, but with a little inspection, it turns out everything is available on the surface of our material culture.
As an interdisciplinary artist, I make performances, photographs, and objects, often textiles, that discuss the joys and horrors of consumer culture. I look at the media messages around us, just really look at them. As consumers, we’re never given tools or literacy to deal with this strange world we live in. Sometimes, I attempt to make good on the promises of the American Dream and corporate advertising, other times I point to this culture’s decadent excesses. I frequently take on the role of the domestic goddess, infomercial host, and other demonstrative consumers in my work. These personas are notable in that they turn what has historically been a trap (consumerism and domestic labor) into a powerful stage.
As a stand-in for the commodity in general, I use food to ask tough questions about things I deeply love. My own food related illness makes this comforting, life giving substance a source of great pain. I live in a world of apparent delections, with delightful and extravagant foods that my great-grandparents could never have imagined, but these exist just out of reach; my body can handle few of the pleasures of the American industrial food system. What promises us the good life is exactly that which is killing us.
Born in Australia, Coorain studied at Georgia State University, earning an MFA in Photography, and Tufts University and the School of Museum of Fine Arts, receiving a BA in Philosophy and a BFA in Fine Arts respectively.
As an interdisciplinary artist, I make performances, photographs, and objects, often textiles, that discuss the joys and horrors of consumer culture. I look at the media messages around us, just really look at them. As consumers, we’re never given tools or literacy to deal with this strange world we live in. Sometimes, I attempt to make good on the promises of the American Dream and corporate advertising, other times I point to this culture’s decadent excesses. I frequently take on the role of the domestic goddess, infomercial host, and other demonstrative consumers in my work. These personas are notable in that they turn what has historically been a trap (consumerism and domestic labor) into a powerful stage.
As a stand-in for the commodity in general, I use food to ask tough questions about things I deeply love. My own food related illness makes this comforting, life giving substance a source of great pain. I live in a world of apparent delections, with delightful and extravagant foods that my great-grandparents could never have imagined, but these exist just out of reach; my body can handle few of the pleasures of the American industrial food system. What promises us the good life is exactly that which is killing us.
Born in Australia, Coorain studied at Georgia State University, earning an MFA in Photography, and Tufts University and the School of Museum of Fine Arts, receiving a BA in Philosophy and a BFA in Fine Arts respectively.