Artists In Residence

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Rebecca Major


Artist Bio

Ms. Major (U.S.) is a New York based artist, born in Budapest, Hungary in 1971, who grew up in the experimental theater group, Squat Theatre, where she was a frequent performer. She holds a BFA from Pratt Institute and received her MFA from Hunter College in 2014. Her work has been exhibited at The Grace Space, New York; The Cynthia Broan Gallery, New York; Ludwig Museum, Budapest; and the Mai Mano House of Hungarian Photography, Budapest; among others. She is currently developing new projects in ceramics and works on paper and pursing other related art projects such as her podcast “I Art New York”, where she is co-host.

Artist Statement

I am a combined-media artist working in several mediums including performance, photography, sculpture, and installation. I often return to the installation format, in which my art connects with the viewer by finding engaging modes of communication. In a recent example of one of my installations entitled Amorphous Prints, 2018, (see attached images), I darkened the exhibition space and cast light onto my on prints at a sharp angle, which created a shift in the viewing experience. In another earlier installation entitled Shirley Gloria, 2014-2017, I used the durational (time-based) format, by playing a narrated audio recording and incorporated a life-size figurative sculpture into the installation.

My current body of work comprises of drawings and prints that investigate notions of identity and the body and explores the possibilities of abstraction while evoking the visceral and the biological. I take inspiration from didactic illustrations and diagrams found in antique textbooks from the 19th-century on the subject of anatomy and botany. I’m interested in the precision of the line-work in the etchings found in these books, and I emulate its sense of scientific analysis. I counter this sense of control by using free-associative processes, which resultantly create a link between notions of the psyche and the bodily, from which newly imagined visual forms and environments emerge. I’ve been working on different formats of my Amorphous project for the past several years; in 2018, I exhibited a series of eight laser engraved works-on-paper, as mentioned earlier, and currently, I’m working on new pen and ink drawings on the same theme.

Additional Resources

Artist’s Website