Tread Water: Sharon Shapiro

FROM KOLAJ 32

Sharon Shapiro’s Collage Paintings Help Us Remember Recreational Segregation in the United States

A visual storyteller, Sharon Shapiro makes work that embodies what it means to have grown up as a white woman in the American South in the 1980s—well after segregation was no longer the law, yet still lived everyday. Her work confronts the past and examines the present using nostalgia and memory. She often uses artifice, including patterns and decoration, to compel her viewer to stay both within and outside of the narrative. Her work aims to contribute to visual culture by raising questions and awareness of societal norms focused on gender, race, identity, and womanhood. A collection of collage paintings brings to light issues of identity and racism in the American South through focusing on the recreational segregation of pools. This rich, yet lesser known fact is significant to this time in the American history, and is thus one that is important to highlight.

In Kolaj 32, Elyana Shamselangeroodi and Ric Kasini Kadour recall the history of recreational segregation and investigate how Shapiro uses collage to bring the subject to viewers.

Shamselangeroodi’s and Kadour’s article about Sharon Shapiro appears in Kolaj 32. To see the complete issue, SUBSCRIBE to Kolaj Magazine or Get a Copy of the Issue.

“My work is the result of a continuing struggle to establish a sense of place in a world where meaning shifts and memory fails.”

Shamselangeroodi’s and Kadour’s article about Sharon Shapiro appears in Kolaj 32. To see the complete issue, SUBSCRIBE to Kolaj Magazine or Get a Copy of the Issue.

Sharon Shapiro holds a BFA in Painting from the Atlanta Collage of Art and an MFA in Studio Art from Maine College of Art. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions in California, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York and Virginia. Her work has been published in three issues of New American Paintings, including the cover of Volume 39. In 2002 and 2018, Shapiro received the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Fellowship. Her work is held in collections including the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia; the American Pavilion Library at the Art Villa Garikula in Kaspi, Georgia; and the Tullman Collection in Chicago. Shapiro shows her work with {Poem 88} Gallery in Atlanta and Garvey|Simon in New York. The artist lives and works outside of Charlottesville, Virginia. Learn more at
www.sharonshapiro.com.

Iranian-American Elyana Shamselangeroodi is a digital collagist. She came to know Shapiro’s work through Kolaj Institute’s Curating Collage Workshop in 2020. Shamselangeroodi’s artwork has been featured in sixteen group shows in the US and Iran since 2016 and in a 2019 solo show, “Do You See What I See?” at Ace Gallery in Tehran, Iran. The artist was profiled in an article for the Staunton (Virginia) News Leader in 2017. Shamselangeroodi currently lives and works in Tehran. Learn more at
www.elyanashamselangeroodi.com