Valerie Piraino

Crosstown Arts is pleased to present Reconstruction, an exhibition of works by New York-based artist Valerie Piraino. Her work examines how sentimental objects are used to rebuild portraits of place and time. With slide installations, framed porcelain cameos, and works on paper, Piraino uses conditions from a recollected past to address the meaning of nostalgia and memory. The artist will visit Memphis and present a discussion of her work on Wednesday, November 20, at 6 pm at the gallery.

Valerie Piraino (b. 1981 Kigali, Rwanda) received her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2004 and her MFA from Columbia University in 2009.  She was artist-in-residence at the Studio Museum in Harlem in 2009-2010 and was nominated for the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant in 2011 and 2012.  Recent and forthcoming exhibitions include “Could Not Bear the Sight of It” Contemporary Art Interventions on Critical Whiteness at the Jane Addams Hull House Museum, Chicago, Illinois (2014), Photoplay at Cindy Rucker Gallery, New York, NY (2013), Present Future at Artissima, Turin, Italy (2013). She lives and works in New York City.

Artist Talk: Wednesday, November 20, 6 pm (5:30 reception)
Discussion moderated by Cedar Lorca Nordbye

Artist Statement 2013

“Working in installation, sculpture and photography, my work explores how images can be re-contextualized.   I think of homes and domestic spaces as sites that are integral to influencing subjectivity, in particular family photographs and slides.

I look to personal mementos as malleable forms. Working from an archive of slides, I create immersive tableaux that critique nostalgia. Drawing from theater, cinema and literature, I make dramatic and disorienting settings that house projected slides. My photographs are a more literal take on malleability, where slides are projected on to fabric and manipulated.  I work to create a psychological backdrop where personal narratives are continuously re-interpreted.”

http://www.valeriepiraino.com

Crosstown Arts thanks Elliot Perry for co-organizing this exhibition.

Image: Valerie Piraino, With Pen in Hand, 2010, frames, slide projectors, slides, tables, 7’x7’x9’

Crosstown Arts
422 N. Cleveland
Memphis, TN 38104