Working across film, sculptural installation, and animation, Danielle Dean examines the language of advertising and media to uncover the power structures hidden within them.
Read MoreDean draws in part from her own background. Born in 1982 in Alabama, the artist grew up in London and went on to receive her BFA from Central Saint Martins (2006), before completing her MFA at the California Institute of the Arts (2012).
Danielle Dean incorporates elements of commercial narratives into her work, deconstructing them to reveal the ways in which they influence ideas about the self, body, borders, and labour. Historical accounts of slavery and violence often appear in juxtaposition with contemporary images and texts in her work.
Central to Dean's work are the dissection of advertising aesthetics and the relationship between the history of colonisation, capitalism, and propaganda.
In her single-channel video installation No Lye (2012), five women—one of them played by the artist—create explosives using bathroom supplies while confined in a small bathroom. An irreconcilable discrepancy exists between their words and actions: the women speak only in slogans, lifted from beauty advertisements and political speeches on terrorism and immigration. The beauty industry and politics may appear to be completely different worlds, but the languages they employ intersect in creating notions of right and wrong, us and them, same and different.
Among Dean's recurring subjects is Nike's 'vampire' sneakers, released in 2003, whose red-and-black colour scheme assumes various forms in her video works. In True Red (2015), the sneakers shapeshift into a castle and a group of women, among other forms, reflecting 'the capacity for objects to seemingly acquire a life of their own,' as the artist writes on her website.
In A Portrait of True Red (2016), protagonist Sam Jones completes her red-and-black look with the sneakers as she narrates historical and contemporary stories of violence: slave revolts in 1700, police brutality, or the maltreatment of Chinese factory workers for Nike. Woven across Jones' accounts are legacies of colonialism and corporate marketing strategies that commodify not only objects but race, gender, and class.
Red and black also provided the main colours for the set of True Red Ruin (Elmina Castle) (2017), a two-channel video installation that saw Dean construct a cardboard prop based on the titular castle. Built in 1482 in Ghana, Elmina Castle was first used by Portuguese traders for storage and later for holding slaves during the Atlantic Slave Trade.
Dean installed her castle in Cuney Homes, a historically affordable housing community in Houston, Texas, and the film shows interactions between a site manager (played by Dean) and local residents (played by her sister Ashstress Agwundobi and friends). Despite the manager's attempts to turn the castle into a fixture in the community, the residents end up destroying it at the end of the film.
Dean explores capitalist utopias and the changing configuration of human labour in Amazon (Proxy), a live performance commissioned for the Performa 2021 Biennial. Performers re-enact the history of Fordlândia, an unsuccessful rubber plantation founded by Ford in the Amazon rainforest in 1928, then assume the roles of Amazon Mechanical Turk workers, who generate data to train AI. Produced in collaboration with actual AMT workers, the performance draws parallels between the financial failure of Fordlândia—and its disregard for working conditions and the environment—and present-day corporate business.
Dean continues to engage with AMT workers through Amazon (2022), a multi-channel video installation presented at Tate Britain, London that contains footage the workers filmed themselves.
Danielle Dean's work has been exhibited and screened internationally.
Select solo exhibitions include Art Now: Danielle Dean, Tate Britain, London (2022); Trigger Torque, Ludwig Forum for International Art, Aachen (2019); True Red Ruin, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Michigan (2018); a shoe, a phone, a castle, Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2017); Focus, Studio Museum, Harlem, New York (2016).
Select group exhibitions include This is Public Space, UP Projects, London (2019); Freedom of Movement, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2018); In Practice: Material Deviance, Sculpture Center, New York (2017); Lagos Live, Goethe Institute Nigeria, Lagos (2016); Made in L.A. 2014, The Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2014); No Soul For Sale, Tate Modern, London (2010).
Dean's website can be found here and her Instagram can be found here.
Sherry Paik | Ocula | 2022
