Lauren Kelley was born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1975 and currently working between Houston and New York. She has a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work has been shown at the Studio Museum in Harlem; The Kitchen, New York; The New Museum; and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston; among others. She is the recipient of a Creative Capital Award and a Louis Comfort Tiffany Award. From 2017 to 2020 she served as Director and Chief Curator of the Sugar Hill Children’s Museum of Art and Storytelling in New York. From 2021-2023 Kelley has been developing work as both an artist and curator with her latest project, Location Scouting at Skidmore College’s Tang Museum. In this evolving exhibition Kelley explores the nature of globetrotting alongside works by sculptor, Margarita Cabrera, animator, Jenny Levonian, and performance artist, Autumn Knight.
Artist Statement
Lauren Kelley is an interdisciplinary artist who employs a wry wit when commenting on matters of innocence, race, and girlhood. At the core of her practice is a series of short, stop-motion animated videos that combine clay-mation with her brown, plastic dolls. Stylistically evocative of children’s television programs of her youth, Kelley stages absurd, jittery, and sometimes endearing narratives. These low-tech scenarios occur in her Technicolor dioramas; a plush backdrop in contrast to the flaccid tales of a discontented cast of ingénues. For Kelley, dolls are a vehicle for navigating the space between luxuries and necessities; sweet and unsavory sentiments; Black and non-black worlds. Currently she is developing a body of work inspired by mid-century American history and the grotesque charm of Todd Haynes’ 1987 cult classic, “Superstar:The Karen Carpenter Story.”
Kelley’s process is a tactile endeavor that revolves around objects and images of objects sourced from eBay. Apart from utilizing dolls, she pursues items that are malleable or evoke an off-kilter aura. Similar to digesting fiction and people watching, browsing online also spurs the impetus for constructing her vignettes. Found imagery informs the production of digitally collaged storyboards, miniature sets, photos and independent sculptures. Her freestanding work buttresses the videos and allows for storylines to unfold incessantly.
