ARTIST STATEMENT
By investigating the ideas of the artists and audience and, more broadly the ideas between self and others, I look to see how this informs our views and situates us within our experiences. As I keep finding myself in a state of ambiguity, here I challenge myself to sit in this space as a place to be or even rest as new meanings are made. As a multidisciplinary artist, I approach my subject from language to image in a mixed-media practice, using screen-prints, banners, neon, photography, video, voice, and performance. I am interested in our inability to fully communicate and explain who we are while sometimes giving space to say nothing at all. I try to give structure to this un- certainty but use my ideas to drive the materials as I develop work around language, text, image, and contemporary ideas regarding the gaps of self. I do this by asking questions about what is lost in the culture’s ideal forms, while I acknowledge the self as a reflection of the external space which surrounds us.
As I give the audience and myself space for self-refection, I do this while using pop-culture references such as Disneyland and Snapchat lters, witty humor, algorithmic text, text conversations, online questionnaires, spam emails, and online reviews.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Carisa Mitchell received her BFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an MFA at HEAD (Haute Ecole d’Art et Design), Geneva, Switzerland. In 2017 she was the prize-winner of the Red Cross – Genève Art Prize with Collectif MNGH. In 2018, she was a prize-winner for New Heads Fondation BNP Paribas Art Awards (Switzerland). Her work has been presented at Art Genève (Geneva, Switzerland), Fri- Art (Fribourg, Switzerland), LOKAL-INT (Biel, Switzerland), LABO (Geneva, Switzerland), Wedge Projects (Chicago, IL ), Mana Contemporary (Chicago, IL), Western Pole (Chicago, IL), and Baby Blue Gallery (Chicago, IL). She has attended UNIDEE Cittadellarte, Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella, Italy, Summer Academy at Swiss Institute in Rome, Italy, and Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art.
© Carisa Mitchell