Born in 1975, Chicago, IL, US
Lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, US
M.F.A., USC Roski School - University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, US
B.F.A., School of the Art Institute, Chicago, IL, US
Exchange Program, California College of Arts and Crafts, Oakland, CA, US
Amanda Ross-Ho has over the past decade invented a personal lexicon from pre-existing symbols. Her language is derived from the detritus of everyday life-newspaper articles, postcards, magazine cut-outs, narcotics agency records, life aspiration manuals, home-craft instruction booklets, etc — the pieces arranged (and often later rearranged) into combinations that imply visual poetry or unsolvable puzzles. Presented as sculpture, installation, painting, or photography, these "still lifes" as she often titles them, defamiliarise and depersonalise found materials in order to underline moments of cultural intersection.
Ross-Ho has said that she is interested in producing something that "feels as though it could be a completely subjective set of marks, but they have a specific history and a specific point in space that they need directing back to." Recognising the layered meanings of her found objects, both intentionally and unintentionally evoked by the artist, the artist hopes to collapse the authentic and performed in an effort to demystify the concept of original creation.
Text courtesy Praz-Delavallade.
