Former CA Resident Artists Megan Hildebrandt and Christine Sajecki join with Sara Holwerda, Sarah Kelly, and Ellen Mueller to play in the new landscape of storytelling, adding a few nails to the coffin of the “official” voice, jumping off the diving board of satire, and perhaps – just perhaps – suggesting that art offers the best way through.
At its most basic, art has always been about storytelling, from cave painters describing a hunt for food to church frescoes narrating the lives of saints. As technology has quickened the pace, the nature of storytelling has changed. Lives are broadcast to the world through blogs, vlogs, tweets, and posts; even the news is packaged and sold as “stories,” with editorial agendas often barely disguised. In this cacophony of subjectivity, it’s now assumed that there are two sides (at least) to every story. Who knows what to believe anymore?
Megan Hildebrandt drew attention in 2009 for dressing as a vintage housewife and scrubbing the marble steps of East Baltimore, and is now producing a comic-book narrative detailing her bout with cancer at age 25. Christine Sajecki’s luminous encaustic paintings float dreamlike through the cities she inhabits, like a latter-day Flannery O’Connor. Sarah Kelly riffs on technology and confessional culture with scripted, split-screen video chats and ironic music videos. “Official” safety videos by Ellen Mueller give instructions to threats that don’t exist, and Sara Holwerda’s satiric animations and props take on sexual mores, meat eaters and consumer culture.
