Lara Nasser “Half Ass”

Meredith Rosen Gallery

poster for Lara Nasser “Half Ass”
[Image: Lara Nasser "Lump" (2018) oil on panel, 10 x 8 in.]

This event has ended.

Meredith Rosen Gallery presents Half Ass, a solo exhibition of new work by Lara Nasser.

In the first gallery, Nasser will present paintings containing imagery from a wide range of popular and religious sources, from amateur Muslim pornography to screenshots of Lebanese television. Two large portraits portray the artist as Jesus, obscuring Nasser’s identity with hand painted ceramics and light sources, in line with the Islamic proscription against figurative iconography. The sculptures include a 3D printed self-portrait where the artist poses again as Jesus, as well as a cheeky reliquary and a life-sized dummy trapped in his own site-specific neurosis. The second gallery is devoted to a participatory video installation depicting a bearded fortune teller. The viewer is given only two options — Who? or What? — and the fortune teller responds, using language that highlights the misunderstanding created by both cultural and technological dislocation.

Throughout the exhibition, Nasser explores the process of unlearning helplessness; questioning dependence on powerful personas; and refusing the masculinity of domination. The beard is a recurring trope, used by the artist to playfully (but aggressively) mock the assumed authority within male-ness, particularly in our most culturally significant figures. Nasser frequently inserts herself into the work as a hybrid of the authority figure and the martyr. The requisitioning of agency from these authorities is also a conflict of culture: the anxiety of simultaneously occupying the authority and martyr positions speaks to the artist’s anxiety around straddling other binary identities, not only male/female, but also human/artificial and West/East.

Lara Nasser (b. 1991 Sacramento, California). She received a BFA from the American University of Beirut 2013 and an MFA from Pratt in 2015. This is her first solo exhibition with Meredith Rosen Gallery.

Media

Schedule

from July 20, 2018 to August 18, 2018

Opening Reception on 2018-07-20 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Lara Nasser

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