ARTIST STATEMENT
My practice interrogates the performative nature of everyday life and the toll that composure takes on the body and mind. Growing up in environments that valued outward strength, I became attuned to the internal negotiations between what is shown and what is suppressed. This tension continues to shape my work. I work across performance, sculpture, drawing, and video, using domestic materials such as bedding alongside the body itself.
My sculptural works emphasize material transformation: foam mattress pads are reconfigured into punching-bag–like forms that absorb both violence and tenderness. The drawings function as emotional registers, using gesture, color, and layered mark-making to record shifting internal states. Across media, I repeatedly return to the act of squeezing—hands pressing into fabric, knuckles whitening against flesh, the weight of the body contained and restrained. These gestures embody quiet battles with self-criticism, emotional suppression, and the cultural expectations placed on womxn to maintain composure.
Recently, my practice has expanded to include works of endurance, using the body to manipulate material and generate emotive mark-making over time. I am increasingly interested in how vulnerability and shared witnessing can create space for communal reflection around deeply private struggles. The submitted works reflect these ongoing explorations: material as a surrogate for emotion, the body under pressure, and gesture as form.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Amy Cannestra is a Milwaukee-based conceptual and multimedia artist whose work examines the performative nature of everyday life and the emotional labor of maintaining composure. Through performance, sculpture, video, and installation, she explores themes of self-criticism, emotional suppression, and the tension between internal turmoil and outward control—often centering the body as both subject and site of pressure.
Cannestra received her BFA in Communication Design from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design in 2006 and her MFA in Studio Art from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2015. Since completing her MFA, she has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally, including the TransArt Triennial in Germany (2016), a ChaShaMa pop-up at One World Trade Center in New York City, the TRIO: Trio-Biennial in Rio de Janeiro (2017), and the 58th Venice Biennial in the Grenada Pavilion. In 2024, she presented two solo exhibitions—I Must Be Missing Something at Bliss Gallery in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and The Body Problem at the Trout Museum of Art in Appleton, Wisconsin—and has two additional solo exhibitions scheduled for 2026.
Alongside her studio practice, Cannestra runs Task Creative, a DIY studio and project space in Cudahy, Wisconsin, dedicated to supporting experimentation, conceptual development, and community among emerging artists.
© Amy Cannestra