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Laura Tanner Graham
Tender Target

2017

$5,375
£4,014.87
€4,654.60
CA$7,463.05
A$8,365.12
CHF 4,355.47
MX$102,141.72
NOK 55,298.69
SEK 52,418.18
DKK 34,728.35
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About the Item

Laura Tanner Graham's drawings and installations are often discussed as part of the Southern Gothic literary tradition, sharing similar themes with authors such as Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty. As a Georgia native, Graham's work seeks to understand the ways in which pattern and printed textiles are informed by social and political movements. Her narratives are tightly bound to antebellum traditions while balancing the changing ideals of the new generation of southern society. Graham received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a BFA from Florida State University. She has exhibited nationally in both group and solo exhibitions including the Weatherspoon Art Museum, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the Athens Institute of Contemporary Art. She has also been a visiting artist at Tulane University and Valdosta State University. In 2016, Graham was awarded a fellowship and residency at the Ucross Foundation and the Vermont Studio Center. Graham is currently living and making work in New Orleans, LA. statement "My research explores the history of pattern and printed textiles and the ways in which they reflect social and political movements. Both narrative and non-objective pattern absorb the history of the time they were conceived. They operate as vessels for nostalgia. Textiles, particularly those that are narrative in nature, can also directly reflect the interests of both the owner and the creator through subversive imagery that often emulates propaganda. I borrow much of my imagery from the French toile patterns of the 18th century. These narrative patterns have a rich history in condemning the aristocracy, exposing their fallacies and ridiculing their tyrannical pursuits. I find these narratives especially poignant in today’s turbulent political climate. Adapting traditional characters and settings from these patterns, I construct new narratives that record contemporary accounts of racial, sexual, and gender injustice. Working with gender and racially charged content in the south can be complicated. I use the decorative and the beautiful as subterfuge, easing viewers into the content through the veil of nostalgia. The collage-like methodology with which the work is created points to the social rules and hierarchies in which delicately constructed and carefully arranged production intentionally alters perception. Pastel targets and altered gendered motifs signal a collective resistance to continued persecution and inequity that plagues the country. With each drawing, I strive to create a continuous narrative that chronicles the Western struggle with diversity in the face of white fragility."
  • Creator:
    Laura Tanner Graham (1987, American)
  • Creation Year:
    2017
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 32 in (81.28 cm)Width: 32 in (81.28 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    New Orleans, LA
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU10521679923

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Dead Eye #2
By Laura Tanner Graham
Located in New Orleans, LA
artwork dimensions (unframed): 37.5h x 13.5w inches Laura Tanner Graham's drawings and installations are often discussed as part of the Southern Gothic literary tradition, sharing s...
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21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Drawings and Watercolor Paint...

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Dead Eye #1
By Laura Tanner Graham
Located in New Orleans, LA
artwork dimensions (unframed): 37.5h x 13.5w inches Laura Tanner Graham's drawings and installations are often discussed as part of the Southern Gothic literary tradition, sharing s...
Category

21st Century and Contemporary Contemporary Drawings and Watercolor Paint...

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Mylar, Ink

Natural Lure
By Laura Tanner Graham
Located in New Orleans, LA
LAURA TANNER GRAHAM’s drawings and installations are often discussed as part of the Southern Gothic literary tradition, sharing similar themes with authors such as Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty. As a Georgia native, Graham’s work seeks to understand the ways in which pattern and printed textiles are informed by social and political movements. Her narratives are tightly bound to antebellum traditions while balancing the changing ideals of the new generation of southern society. Graham received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a BFA from Florida State University. She has exhibited nationally in both group and solo exhibitions including the Weatherspoon Art Museum, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, and the Athens Institute of Contemporary Art. She has also been a visiting artist at Tulane University and Valdosta State University. In 2016, Graham was awarded a fellowship and residency at the Ucross Foundation and the Vermont Studio Center. Graham is currently living and making work in Tucson, AZ. STATEMENT Firmly grounded in America’s expansive colonial history, my work interrogates how Southern culture has been idealized as “quintessential America” and the bedrock of traditional American values. Using my familiarity and position within Southern culture, I have created a new visual literacy to demonstrate how America’s nostalgia for tradition has been manipulated in an effort to isolate and disenfranchise. My drawings act as a visual archive of research that examines the consequences of American colonialism and addresses the sense of white fragility that continues to pervade Western culture. In the midst of widespread anxiety over the collective American identity, there has been a revival of many of the country’s unresolved historical battles, including contentious race relations, sexism, nativism, and an ever-growing wage gap. I employ the Americana aesthetic of the old South to parallel historical and contemporary acts of resistance to racial, economic, and gender diversity. Borrowing directly from the decorative arts, the meticulously hand-cut mylar and equally intricate drawing capitalizes on America’s propensity for nostalgia to lure the viewer into confronting injustices through the detached lens of that which has already happened. Through a combination of appropriated and invented imagery, my work contextually constructs contemporary accounts of systemic marginalization, executed under the guise of leisure, embellishment and luxury. The dense visual language invites investigation into the textured surfaces and leads the viewer to reflect on the social textures of contemporary culture while questioning their own complicity in current social constructs. Sourcing from period- specific textiles, turn-of-the-century advertisements, campaign posters, and found family photographs, the collaged images create a singular narrative composition that document the cyclical and systemic nature of marginalization in America. The methodology with which the drawings are constructed echoes historical layers of rules, regulations and hierarchies that are stitched into dominant white American myths. The resulting drawings are indexical in nature, recording the parallels between topics of current debate and 18th century Western expansionism. The disconnect between the delicate nature of the work and the unresolved cultural tensions that it reveals provides a visual record of the inconsistencies of American idealism. My current project explores the South as the embodiment of America’s pastoral traditions and values that are at the center of the “Make America Great Again” movement, a movement which has both exploited and is at odds with a social ideal that simultaneously proclaims itself to be “post- racial” and “post- gender” while identifying with a “pull-yourself-up-by-the-boot-straps” mentality. As one of the earliest colonized areas, the South is often portrayed as a region of racial and gender stability in the face of impending change. I am currently working with research institutions in the South to further understand how the architectural structure of the Southern plantation...
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Low Front IV
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[Tucson, AZ ::: b. 1987, Atlanta, GA] LAURA TANNER GRAHAM's drawings and installations are often discussed as part of the Southern Gothic literary tradition, sharing similar themes ...
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Lola I
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Plaything
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Plaything, 20”x20”, Ink on Hand-Cut Mylar, 2018 This piece focuses on America's cultural appropriation and exploitation of Mexican culture. Living in the desert Southwest...
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