Yossi Milo Gallery 245 Tenth Avenue 10001 New York États-Unis
British artist Muzi Quawson explores the nature of identity of those who are perceived as society's outsiders. The series “Pull Back the Shade” follows a young musician and her relationships with her partners, friends, and twin daughters over the course of several years. The artist draws on the cinematography of New American Cinema of the 1970s and its aggrandizement of the antihero.
Muzi Quawson graduated from the Royal College of Art and was included in the Triennial exhibition at Tate Britain in 2006. The exhibition will be her first solo show in the United States.
Focusing on “outsiders”, Ms. Quawson explores the various social, financial, and political structures that define American society. With photographs that possess a cinematic style, Ms. Quawson investigates the identity of Amanda Jo Williams, a young musician and mother in Woodstock, New York. After a chance meeting in Manhattan in 2002, Ms. Quawson created Pull Back the Shade over the course of the following four years while staying with Amanda in Woodstock and traveling with her around the country.
Ms. Quawson photographs Amanda as she navigates motherhood, communicates with her partners, and handles the frustrations of her career. The style of the photographs recalls the cinematography of New American Cinema of the 1970s and its aggrandizement of the anti-hero. Pull Back the Shade was first shown at the Tate Britain in London where the works were displayed as a slideshow, bringing their collective effect closer to that of a film. For this exhibition, the color negatives have been developed as Duratran prints and placed in light boxes; the result is a series of illuminated photographs that resemble stills from a color film.
Ms. Quawson completed her Masters in Fine Arts at the Royal College of Art, in London in 2006. Since then, her work has been featured at the Tate Britain; the Barbican Art Gallery, London; and Bloomberg New Contemporaries, Manchester. Muzi Quawson was born in 1978 in London, where she continues to live and work.