Sienna Shields
Born1976
Anchorage Alaska, United States of America
NationalityAmerican
Alma materLewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon
Known formixed-media artwork, the Yams Collective
Notable workGood Stock on the Dimension Floor: An Opera
StyleAbstract art
Websitesiennashields.com

Sienna Shields (born 1976) is an American abstract artist specializing in large-format collage pieces. She was also the chief organizer of the HowDoYouSayYaminAfrican? artist collective and the director of its digital work, Good Stock on the Dimension Floor: An Opera which was accepted for the 2014 Whitney Biennial.[1]

Early life

Shields was born in Alaska in 1976. Both her parents were teachers and she and two siblings were home-schooled for a time while living outside Anchorage.[2] She graduated from Lewis & Clark College, Portland, Oregon with a degree in Caribbean and Latin American history in 1998.[2] in 2001, she moved to the DUMBO collective in Brooklyn.[2]

Artistic style

Shields's working process has been influenced by the "energy and chaos" of the collectives in which she lived for much of her working life.[3] Many of her works are variations on collages of acrylic paint and multiple layers of cut or torn paper, assembled into large abstract pieces.[2] She developed this working style after college in part due to financial restraints.[3] Other works include bead sculptures, mixed media art, and digital imagery.

2014 Whitney Biennial

The Whitney Biennial of contemporary art is an invitation-only exhibition which generally favors young artists and in the past helped bring greater recognition to artists like Georgia O'Keeffe, Jackson Pollock and Jeff Koons.[4] The Biennial has often faced criticism over issues of privilege, access and inclusivity.[5] Shields organized the Yams Collective (short for HowDoYouSayYaminAfrican?) of 38 international mostly black and queer musicians, poets, actors, writers and visual artists to create a digital film about racial identity for the 2014 edition.[1] Shields was encouraged by this diversity, saying: "I’d go to art events, and I’d be the only black person in the room — here in New York. It was ridiculous."[1] One of the Biennial's curators, Michelle Grabner, had visited Shields in her studio and seen a short video loop she had made in Alaska.[1] This became the instigation for the collective's submission, a 53-minute digital piece in 35 parts titled Good Stock on the Dimension Floor: An Opera.[1]

Despite the collective's membership, one of the few individual black female artists invited that year was "Donelle Woolford", a creation of Joe Scanlan.[6] Scanlan, a white, male, Princeton University professor hired a succession of actresses to play "Woolford" at events. The inclusion of this "fake" artist led the Yams Collective to withdraw their submission, objecting to "Woolford's" inclusion in a show alongside their work.[7] Shields explained the withdrawal was due to not only Scanlan but also:"...the history of the Whitney and its lack of any kind of initiative in changing its white supremacist attitudes."[8] The collective also considered the inclusion of Scanlan to be a reflection of larger issues of racism in the elite art world.[9] The film instead premiered at the Trinidad and Tobago Film Festival.[10]

Other notable exhibitions

Solo exhibitions

  • July 11-September 12, 2009, The Other Line, Brooklyn, Superfront Gallery Artist in residence exhibition[11]
  • January 7-February 6, 2019 Invisible Woman, Chicago, Kruger Gallery[3][12]

Joint and group exhibitions

  • November 6-December 20, 2009, Francis Young & Sienna Shields, Berlin, Kuma-Galerie.[13]
  • November 8, 2012 – March 10, 2013, FORE, New York, Studio Museum in Harlem [11] reoccurring group show survey of the work of contemporary young minority artists of importance.[14]

Personal life

Shields married fellow artist Chuck Close in 2013[15] and he included her as a subject in his 2017 series Subway Portraits although they had by that time divorced.[16]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Lee, Felicia R. (21 February 2014). "Singular Art, Made by Plurals Yams Collective Brings Work to Whitney Biennial". New York Times. Retrieved 15 March 2018.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Lovelace, Joyce (18 March 2013). "Intuitive Mapping". American Craft Magazine (published April–May 2013). Retrieved 22 November 2019.
  3. 1 2 3 Donoghue, Katy (4 February 2016). "Cut Paper, Collage, and Beads: Sienna Shields' "Invisible Woman"". whitewall. New York: Sky Art Media, Inc. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  4. ↑ Kennedy, Randy (8 February 2014). "Seeking U.S. Art All Over Map. Just Check GPS". New York Times. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  5. ↑ Bodick, Noelle (4 March 2014). "A Brief History of the Whitney Biennial, America's Most Controversial Art Show". Artspace. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  6. ↑ Steinhauer, Jillian (15 November 2013). "The Depressing Stats of the 2014 Whitney Biennial". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  7. ↑ Heddaya, Mostafa (14 May 2014). "Artist Collective Withdraws from Whitney Biennial [UPDATED]". Hyperallergic. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  8. ↑ Pensky, Nathan (20 June 2014). "Race in the art world: The many faces of Joe Scanlan". The Daily Dot. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  9. ↑ Davis, Ben (30 May 2014). "The Yams, on the Whitney and White Supremacy". artnet.news. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  10. ↑ Aftab, Kaleem (4 October 2014). "Opera hits wrong note". The Independent (UK).
  11. 1 2 "Shields, Sienna". AAVAD.com. African American Visual Artists Database. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  12. ↑ "Kruger Gallery Chicago". Chicago Gallery News. January–April 2016. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  13. ↑ "Kuma Galerie". ArtSlant. Archived from the original on 24 November 2019. Retrieved 24 November 2019.
  14. ↑ Wise, Lloyd (May 2013). "Fore". Artforum International. 51 (9): 332.
  15. ↑ Hylton, Wil S. (13 July 2016). "The Mysterious Metamorphosis of Chuck Close". New York Times Magazine. Retrieved 22 November 2019.
  16. ↑ Anderson, Tom (20 September 2017). "Legendary Painter Chuck Close on Public Art, Diversity and His Ex-Wife". InsideHook. Retrieved 22 November 2019.
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