Jordan Strafer: Trilogy

July 28 - November 26,2023

From CAMH: "Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (CAMH) is excited to announce the upcoming exhibition, Jordan Strafer: Trilogy, the artist’s first solo museum exhibition. Both perversely pleasurable and pleasurably perverse, Jordan Strafer’s videos are absurd, fantastical, humorous, and, at times, violent meditations on power and the uniquely human capacity to inflict violence, be it physical, psychological, or both. The exhibition presents Strafer’s recent trilogy of videos PEP (Process Entanglement Procedure) (2019), SOS (2021), and PEAK HEAVEN LOVE FOREVER (2022), alongside a selection of related works on paper by the artist. In her highly narrative videos, Strafer draws from both autobiography and a range of cultural sources to create what the artist refers to as “Mad Libs-like” collages of visual and textual references that include public speeches, psychoanalytic theory, film history, and literature. Allusions to popular culture such as Gwyneth Paltrow’s 1999 Academy Awards speech, The Wizard of Oz, Judy Garland, and the televised testimonies of Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford are mixed with the artist’s personal memories. To make her films, Strafer often employs both dolls and human actors, reflecting her interest in the ways that dolls, masking, and other types of stand-ins can serve equally as archetypes of identity, objects of projection, and surrogates or doubles for real people. Periodically, human or silicone hands enter the frames to wipe a doll’s tear with a Qtip, or to caress and reposition it, simultaneously suggesting care, control, and containment. Strafer’s videos address the insidious and violent nature of whiteness, privilege, and misogyny, while serving less as a judgment on violence and cruelty than as a testament to their very existence."

On View: July 28, 2023 | 12-5 pm

Contemporary Arts Museum Houston - CAMH 5216 Montrose Boulevard
Houston, TX 77006
Get Directions