Mary Kelly's practice spans more than four decades and encompasses ideas about the body, systems of classification and power, memory, and history. Based in Los Angeles, she is best recognised for her large-scale narrative installations, including Post-Partum Document, 1973–79. Kelly's projects frequently blend personal and political issues of gender, identity, and collective memory, so as to visualise the impact of historical events on the nature of everyday life. Kelly's work has been central to discussions of Conceptual art and feminism since the 1970s, and her writings have been requisite to the discourse of postmodernism. Her current project, Circa Trilogy, which continues the exploration of generational and historical themes, has been undertaken with the support of 2015 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship.
Read MoreKelly was born in Iowa in 1941 and lives and works in Los Angeles. She graduated with a BA in Art and Music from College of Saint Teresa, an MA in Studio Art and Art History from Pius XII Institute in Florence Italy, a Postgraduate Certificate in Painting from St. Martin's School of Art in London, and an Honorary Doctor of the Arts from University of Wolverhampton, England.
Kelly's work has been shown internationally as the subject of solo shows at The Tate Britain in London, 2013; The Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, 2008; The Institute of Contemporary Art in London, 1993; and The New Museum for Contemporary Art in New York, 1990. She has participated in a number of group exhibitions and biennials, including Women and Work at the Tate Modern in London, 2016; Le Grande Madre at Palazzo Reale in Milan, 2015; Take It or Leave It: Institution, Image, Ideology at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, 2014; Ends of the Earth at MOCA Los Angeles, 2012; This Will Have Been: Art, Love and Politics in the 1980s at MCA Chicago, ICA Boston, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, 2012; The Deconstructive Impulse at Nasher Museum, Dallas, CAM Houston, and Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, NY, 2011; Wack! Art and Feminist Revolution at MOCA Los Angeles and PS1 in New York, 2007; Sydney Biennale (2008), Documenta 12 (2007), and The Whitney Biennial in New York (2004).
Text courtesy Mitchell-Innes & Nash.