elena gross
class of 2016
about
Elena Gross is the Exhibitions Associate at the Museum of the African Diaspora and an independent writer and culture critic living in Oakland, CA. She received an MA in Visual & Critical Studies from the California College of the Arts in 2016, and her BA in Art History and Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies from St. Mary’s College of Maryland in 2012. She specializes in representations of identity in fine art, photography, and popular media. Elena was formerly the creator and co-host of the arts & visual culture podcast what are you looking at? published by Art Practical. Her research has been centered around conceptual and material abstractions of the body in the work of Black modern and contemporary artists. She has presented her writing and research at institutions and conferences across the U.S., including Nook Gallery, Southern Exposure, KADIST, Harvard College, YBCA, California College of the Arts, and the GLBT History Museum. In 2018, she collaborated with the artist Leila Weefur on the publication Between Beauty & Horror (Sming Sming Books). The two performed a live adaptation of their work at The Lab, San Francisco.
elena’s thesis
THE BODY REMAINS: THE FELT/PHOTOGRAPHY OF LORNA SIMPSON
In the 1990s, artists were responding to a pervasive cultural interest in identity and difference within postmodern art. Conceptual photographer Lorna Simpson had become known for her effusive portraiture of racial and gendered subjects, with specific focus on hair and the black female body. Breaking away from traditional photography, Simpson began exploring materiality and installation through serigraphy, a photographic screen printing process, to develop new dialogues about the relationship between identity and the body. Through analysis of two series of photographs printed onto felt, this project posits that Simpson challenged the way visual culture at the time was conceptualizing identity.