2021 Artist in Residence
MOA welcomes Annette Isham as one of our 2021 Artists in Residence.
Annette Isham is an artist and professor currently living in Denver, Colorado. Isham received her M.F.A. from The American University and teaches 4D and Animation at Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design. Isham has exhibited nationally, most recently showing the series Among the Multitudes at CURRENTS International Media Festival in Santa Fe, and her film Sweet Slow: Indirection as part of Unbounded Unleashed Unforgiving: Reconsidering Cyberfmeinism in 2021, a virtual exhibition made in collaboration with New Art City, the College Art Association and the New Media Caucus. Isham has recently completed a residency at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Snowmass, CO.
“My work explores the dynamics of gender, race, and geography through creating animated landscapes, layering moments of fantasy, failure, obstacle, and disruption. My process enjoys the absurd and inserts moments of narrative and collaged sublime. In my latest series, a multitude of layers oscillate against each other at different speeds, creating compositions that feels at once familiar and jarring. Clouds speed past a superimposed glare. Fluttering silhouettes suggest shadows cast by leaves. Layers of images and digitally drawn marks create an impossible yet strangely cohesive landscape. A cascade of repeating female figures meld into each other, multiplying and dividing in a multi-dimensional inhabitance.
Born in Dominican Rep and growing up in Colorado, my latest works explore associations with geography, more specifically, how a woman of mixed race can appropriate the masculine myth of the American West. A myth that tells a tale of a fresh rugged landscape in need of being conquered and in doing so could provide adventure, strength, freedom, and manhood. I see my practice wedged in a crevasse, on one side a feeling of alienation from the American landscape, and on the other, a need to add my own future and history. The new feminine inhabits her landscape, is multi-colored and multi-dimensional, moving in and out of origin.”
-Annette Isham
