Mary Kelly (artist)
| Mary Kelly | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1941 (age 75–76) Fort Dodge, Iowa |
| Movement | Conceptual art |
| Awards | Guggenheim Fellowship (2015) |
| Website | marykellyartist.com |
Mary Kelly (born 1941) is an American conceptual artist, feminist, educator, and writer.
Mary Kelly has contributed extensively to the discourse of feminism and postmodernism through her large-scale narrative installations and theoretical writings. Kelly’s work mediates between conceptual art and the more intimate interests of artists of the 1980s. Her work has been exhibited internationally and she is considered among the most influential contemporary artists working today. Mary Kelly is Professor of Art at the University of California, Los Angeles, where she is Head of Interdisciplinary Studio, an area she initiated for artists engaged in site-specific, collective, and project based work. Mary Kelly is represented by "Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects" in Culver City, CA and "Pippy Houldsworth Gallery" in London, UK.
Kelly is known for her project-based work in the form of large-scale narrative installations. Post-Partum Document (1973–79) is a process-based work, which uses objects of both personal and theoretical significance to document the mother-child relationship. Gloria Patri (1992) draws on an archive of found material from the first Gulf War to question how the violence of international events affects or is affected by individual lives. In her monumental work, Interim (1984–89), Kelly deals with collective memories of women. Its object is to specify the discourses that define and regulate feminine identities. In the Ballad of Kastriot Rexhepi (2001), panels of lint, formed in a domestic dryer, are joined together to form undulating waves that tell the story of a child abandoned during the war in Kosovo. As part of this work, Kelly commissioned the composer, Michael Nyman to create a score for the ballad that was performed by soprano Sarah Leonard and the Nyman Quartet at the opening of the exhibition at the Santa Monica Museum of Art For Love Songs (2005), Kelly enlisted the help of young women interested in the philosophies and legacies of the women’s movement to restage historical photographs of protests some thirty years after they were taken. Her “remixes” are just approximate enough to allow for real differences between versions, but similar enough to suggest literal and metaphorical continuities.
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