Andrea M. Coates
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Andrea M. Coates STATEMENT I use photography and fashion as a lens into many areas of contemplation: ideas of presentation and representation, social behaviour, gender identity and power, mortality and the body, and the uncanny. Mass-circulated images of beauty and fashion use garments to simultaneously hide and accentuate our form. This triggers feelings of both anxiety and confidence. I’m interested in making works that use both apprehension and seduction resulting in a sense of unease and inquiry. My methods include cut paper collage, the collaged sculptural object and digital photomontage. My works disrupt the fashion portrait by creating a new form of an unresolved, imperfect body (or sometimes no body at all). They appear as a shell of an outer self, hovering in space like identity daydreams or pieces of memory. The images become their own beings, detached from time, yet troubled with mortality. BIO I studied advertising and art studio while earning my undergraduate degrees from the University of Kentucky. During the 6 years in between undergrad and graduate studies, I held positions at an ad agency, art museum and non-profit art center. My work and personal experience not only helped shape the beginning of my career in visual image making, but also influenced the context in which I see my work operating. Recently, I graduated with my Masters of Fine Arts from Washington University in St. Louis. My thesis work “Fabricated Images and Bodily Realities” was exhibited at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum in St. Louis. A summary of that work can be read HERE. ARTIST CONTACT [click to email] IMAGES
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