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Mary Reid Kelley

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Mary Reid Kelley
Mary Reid Kelley at the Contemporary Dayton, Ohio, 2023
Born1979 (age 44–45)
NationalityAmerican
Alma materSt. Olaf College (BFA), Yale University (MFA)
Notable workThe Syphilis of Sisyphus (2011), You Make Me Iliad (2010)
SpousePatrick Kelley
AwardsMacArthur Fellow, Baloise Art Prize, Guggenheim Fellowship
Websitewww.maryreidkelley.com

Mary Reid Kelley (born 1979) is an American artist based in upstate New York.

Life

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Mary Reid Kelley was born in Greenville, SC in 1979.[1] Reid Kelley received her BFA from St. Olaf College in Minnesota and a MFA in painting from Yale University in 2009.[1] Reid Kelley's black and white videos fuse classical drama, modern literature and contemporary pop culture into observations on gender, class, and urban development. They satirize the promise of progress through dense layering of cultural references ranging from southern church socials and women's magazines to Borges and Baudelaire. Reid Kelley often works in collaboration with her partner, Patrick Kelley with whom she currently lives with in Saratoga Springs, New York.[2]

Mary Reid Kelley & Patrick Kelley at the Contemporary Dayton, Ohio, 2023

Reid Kelley is represented by the galleries Pilar Corrias in London, Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects in Los Angeles, CA and Fredericks & Freiser in New York, NY.[1]

Work

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Reid Kelley is known for her short films, but often integrates her background of painting and drawing into her multimedia works.[3] For example, in her 2015 short film, The Thong of Dionysus, she integrates her drawing and painting skills in the set's background as seen by the harshly drawn and sharply outlined portraits behind the minotaur.[4] Reid Kelley's use of contrasting black and white further adds a cartoonish quality to her works, perpetuating the line between comedy and serious subject matter that Reid Kelley's works tend to play with.[2] Reid Kelley herself noted her ability to intertwine these multiple genres of art, writing,

I realized that I was desperate to enact the characters that were the forces behind my 2D work, and that in doing so, all my ‘non-art’ loves like literature and costume and wordplay could be rolled up into a time based work that functioned like a shout-y, rambunctious, emotionally incontinent painting.[4]

Writing in 2014, Daniel Belasco, Curator of Exhibitions and Programs at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at State University of New York at New Paltz, noted that Reid Kelley

works in the vanguard of a generation that blends the digital and the analog to discourse with the millennia. From 2008 to the present, her astonishing videos have fused live performance, animation, drawing, sculpture, and digital design. Her poignant characters—a nurse, a prostitute, a bohemian, the Minotaur—confront the limits of their historical situations in droll verse. Blending Homer and Cindy Sherman by way of Virginia Woolf, Reid Kelley tells finely wrought narrative epics, rife with wordplay and art historical references, set in World War I, nineteenth-century Paris, and classical antiquity. Working with archival sources and a range of collaborators, especially Patrick Kelley, her husband and an accomplished artist, Reid Kelley invents a poetic mongrel media.[5]

While studying at Yale, Reid Kelley was able to benefit greatly from the archives of students who had left for World War One, realizing the importance of poetry for understanding both artistic and popular culture of the time.[3] In fact, her first four film projects focus on World War One: Camel Toe (2008), the Queen's English (2008), Sadie the Saddest Sadist (2009), and You Make Me Iliad (2010).[3] Additionally, in her research, Reid Kelley discovered that the female experience of these events was largely lost to the past, eclipsed by a profusion of poetry, literature and art produced by men. In an effort to pull women from the margins of historical records and textbooks, her work centers around female protagonists such as nurses, prostitutes, and factory workers.[3] Eleanor Heartney emphasized this point when she wrote,

The films they create riff on commedia dell’arte, German Expressionist movies, and newspaper comic strips, reimagining them in a format that resembles an animated drawing. They leap promiscuously through history and mythology, emphasizing moments when gender roles and social structures were in flux.[2]

The narrative short films of Mary Reid Kelley often take place during historical moments of social upheaval and war.[3] Also in these works, the themes of feminism and empowerment of women's voices remains fairly constant, but her style tends to vary depending on the subject matter of her projects.[6]

Interweaving historical and literary references, euphemisms, and clever puns within the parameters of rhyming verse,[7] her scripts are both humorous and complex. Her humorous lines are delivered with a deadpan quality, emphasizing the effectiveness of both her acting and writing styles.[6] The result is a delightful manipulation of language that satirizes established social structures while disrupting concepts of logic and reason with its nonsensical qualities.[8]

Reid Kelley has been the subject of many awards and honors throughout her career. She has been awarded the MacArthur Fellowship in 2016, the Baloise Art Prize in 2016, the Guggenheim Fellowship in 2014,[9] and many more.[1]

You Make Me Iliad (2010)

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You Make Me Iliad is a work created by Reid Kelley in 2010.[10] The work is 14 minutes long and 49 seconds, and it is shot completely in black and white.[10] The story of the project follows two characters, a prostitute and a soldier, in German-occupied Belgium during the First World War; Reid Kelley portrays both characters.[10] In this work, Reid Kelley follows the theme of storytelling for women lost in history through witty lines and sharp humor contrasted against the background of sorrow and hardship.[11] Moreover, Reid Kelley was inspired to tell the story of her World War One heroine after discovering that most literature of the World War One era was written by men, leading to her heroine's story largely being narrated by the men in her life. This choice both reflects the problems of archival records that have largely been shaped by male voices and the irony of a woman's story being told by men who are largely ignorant to such experiences.[2]

The Syphilis of Sisyphus (2011)

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The Syphilis of Sisyphus is a week created by Reid Kelley in 2011.[12] The work is 11 minutes long and two seconds, and it is shot completely in black and white.[12] The story follows similar themes Reid Kelley's work has often subscribed to, following the story of a pregnant young woman, Sisyphus, who has contracted syphilis; Reid Kelley plays the role of Sisyphus.[13] Like her other works, Reid Kelley intertwines her poetic storytelling with humorous additions to bring light to the story of a forgotten and doomed woman in a highly romanticized time period: the French La Belle Époque.[13]

We Are Ghosts (2017)

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We Are Ghosts is a more recent project of Reid Kelley; it was featured at the Tate Liverpool and the Baltimore Museum of Art and was Reid Kelley's first museum solo project to be displayed in the UK. The work reimagines life on a U.S submarine, taking place at the end of World War Two.[14] The exhibition featured two of her classically black and white stylized short films: In the Body of the Sturgeon and This is Offal. The exhibition also displayed Reid Kelley's artistic strengths outside of film, showcasing her life-size light-box portraits of the characters shown in her films.[15] The work also follows the typical narration style used by Reid Kelley, blending poetry from historical sources to retell less glamorous and more realistic stories. Such accounts do not hedge around the misery and challenges faced by the characters, but they still maintain humorous and satirical themes.[14]

Solo exhibitions

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d "Mary Reid Kelley | Biography". Pilar Corrias. Retrieved 2020-12-12.
  2. ^ a b c d Heartney, Eleanor (January 27, 2015). "Sex, Mayhem, and Ghosts of the Unconscious". ARTnews. Retrieved December 12, 2020.
  3. ^ a b c d e "No. 90: Mary Reid Kelley, Camille Utterback". The Modern Art Notes Podcast. 2014-11-02. Retrieved 2020-12-12.
  4. ^ a b "Mary Reid Kelley – 22 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy". www.artsy.net. Retrieved 2020-12-12.
  5. ^ Kelley, Mary Reid (2014). Mary Reid Kelley : Working objects and videos. New Paltz, New York: Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, SUNY New Paltz and University Art Museum, State University of New York at Albany. p. 7. ISBN 978-0-615-70149-3. OCLC 871789322.
  6. ^ a b Cuir, Raphael (December 2014). "Mary Reid Kelley". Art-Press: 60–62. ISSN 0245-5676 – via Art Full Text.
  7. ^ "Transcript of 'The Syphilis of Sisyphyus'".
  8. ^ a b "Digital Collection | The Rose Art Museum | Brandeis University – Rosebud | Mary Reid Kelley". rosecollection.brandeis.edu. Retrieved 2020-12-12.
  9. ^ "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation | Mary Reid Kelley".
  10. ^ a b c Robecchi, Michele (November 2010). "Mary Reid Kelley". Flash Art International: 102. ISSN 0394-1493 – via Art Full Text.
  11. ^ "Mary Reid Kelley: "You Make Me Iliad" (SHORT)". Art21. Retrieved 2020-12-12.
  12. ^ a b "THE SYPHILIS OF SISYPHUS (2011) – MARY REID KELLEY and PATRICK KELLEY". Retrieved 2020-12-12.
  13. ^ a b Sorkin, Jenni (2013). "Softer Atrocities: An Introduction to Mary Reid Kelley's The Syphilis of Sisyphus" (PDF). Gulf Coast Literary Journal: 94–96.
  14. ^ a b c Tate. "Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley: We Are Ghosts – Exhibition at Tate Liverpool". Tate. Retrieved 2020-12-12.
  15. ^ a b "Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley". Baltimore Museum of Art. Retrieved 2020-12-12.
  16. ^ a b c d e f g Kelley, Mary Reid (2014). Mary Reid Kelley : Working objects and videos. New Paltz, New York: Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, SUNY New Paltz & University Art Museum, University at Albany. p. 70. ISBN 978-0-615-70149-3. OCLC 871789322.
  17. ^ "The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art | SUNY New Paltz". www.newpaltz.edu. Retrieved 2020-12-12.
  18. ^ "Mary Reid Kelley: Working Objects and Videos | University at Albany". www.albany.edu. Retrieved 2020-12-12.
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