Shana Moulton

Shana Moulton
Born	(1976-07-17) July 17, 1976 (age 47) Oakhurst, California
Nationality	American
Known for	Video art
Notable work	Whispering Pines, The Mountain Where Everything is Upside Down
Awards	Creative Capital Grant (2013)

Shana Moulton is a New York based media artist who explores contemporary anxieties through her filmic alter ego, Cynthia. Combining an unsettling, wry humor with a low-tech, Pop sensibility, Cynthia's interactions with the everyday world are both mundane and surreal, in a domestic sphere just slightly askew. As her protagonist navigates the enigmatic and possibly magical properties of her home decor, Moulton initiates relationships with objects and consumer products that are at once banal and uncanny.^[1]

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[New York Close Up] ♪ ["A Brief History Of Shana Moulton & Whispering Pines"] I grew up in Oakhurst, California which is somewhere between Fresno and Yosemite. [Shana Moulton--Artist] And uh, I grew up in a mobile home park that my parents owned right on the border of the Sierra National Forest. And it was a senior mobile home park and it was called Whispering Pines. ♪ Good morning to you... ♪ It was a really beautiful place to grow up. Instead of like playing with the kids on the block I'd go and visit the widow in the trailer and make puzzles with her or... There was one lady that had a lot of birds in cages and I'd go play with her birds. [GLASS SHATTERING] But then, you know, we were like right on the, you know... it bordered the forest so I'd just go off into the forest in a...you know, and then hang out with the trees and so... I spent a lot of time alone in the woods so when Twin Peaks came out I could really identify with that element in that show. The sort of communing with nature and this dark or benevolent spirits in the forest. And I feel like that was my first art experience. That was like the first thing that really moved me. But really in terms of visual arts, it wasn't until I was at Berkeley that I actually went to a museum for the first time and I took per...performance art class. Or actually it was called new genres. And it changed my life. Maybe I should change outfits now? Maybe, should I? And then in grad school I started to make this series of dresses with medical devices embedded in the fabric. I was originally making these series to exist on their own, you know to like hang on hangers or on body forms. But I mean they weren't really coming alive on their own. ♪ Let's go down here. ♪ And I started to think about what kind of person would have to wear such a dress. ♪ Sorry. ♪ ♪ Okay... ♪ So really that's where the alter ego started was with this neurotic, hemorrhoid pillow dress character shopping. ♪ Yes? ♪ Shana's alter ego is named Cynthia. ♪ No? Okay. ♪ And also because the first video didn't really have an ending I put "to be continued" at the end And so then I knew I had to make another one and I also knew I had to give it a title. So I was thinking like well, what would be something like Twin Peaks? And so I came up with Whispering Pines to like sort of, yeah, base it in my autobiography loosely. ♪ And then when I...when I moved to New York I started to, one of, one of the jobs I had was as a home organizer. And we would go to houses usually in like New Jersey or Connecticut and uh, organize people's belongings. And sometimes it would be like a team of seven people organizing like a massive gar...you know stuffed garage. And then another job would be organizing someone who is already hyper anal and organized. Finding like the ideal like penholder for them, you know at the Container Store? I actually found a lot of I don't know solace in that job just because I... I sort of veer between having like a chaotic explosion of belongings and then wanting to find like the right penholder for each object. ♪ There's usually I think something physically wrong with her that's probably in her mind. ♪ And it's just because I wrestle with hypochondria and you know I had carpel tunnel... And it was, I think it was real and I think it was pretty, you know, serious enough for me to go on disability but it's something I am always questioning you know. Do I really have it? Or am I just trying to get out of writing all these emails? ♪ And I think that's sort of the main impetus for Cynthia's struggles. ♪ I guess I'm not Cynthia. But if I'm not, then no one is, or... (laughs) I mean I am. I think I am. I mean it is, you know, me as if I were a bit more naïve maybe. Or that plus me always being alone. ♪ It's like a tool for me to figure out my own ambiguities or ambivalence about things in the world... To help me deal with them and with a little humor and perspective. So yeah, I don't know how to... I don't know how much I should separate her from myself. ♪

Background and education

Born in Oakhurst, California, Shana Moulton attended the University of California, Berkeley and continued to receive a MFA from Carnegie Mellon University. She has also studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and De Ateliers in Amsterdam, Netherlands. Moulton has been an artist in resident at Harvestworks, New York City (2008), and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2011). She has also received fellowships and grants from the Experimental Television Center (2009), the Foundation for Contemporary Arts (2009), and Harvestworks (2010).^[2] She currently works in Brooklyn, New York.^[3]

Works

Whispering Pines

The 10-part video series, Whispering Pines follows the protagonist's search for perfect health and peace through consumer objects.^[4] Cynthia, Moulton's intimately autobiographical, surreal, video alter-ego, interacts with appropriated new-age marginalia, prescription drugs, and beauty products in scenes that address the difficulties of self-discovery and fulfillment in a modern, consumerism-driven society.^[5] Moulton explains that she is not required to 'get into character' for Cynthia; Cynthia is always there. Moulton says of her alter-ego, "It's me in the bathroom; it's me worried about aging; it's me looking at a beauty magazine... We share a brain. I don't even think of her as a character. It's just me."^[6] Through Moulton's narrative of self-discovery, Cynthia gains relief from the social pressures of her domestic products by using them in non-prescribed ways.^[7]

Exhibitions

Solo

Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY (upcoming)
Journeys Out of the Body, Museum of Fine Art, St. Petersburg, Florida (June 18 – October 9, 2016)
Hybrid Naples, Fondazione Morra Greco Naples, Italy (2013)
A Unique Boutique, Galerie Crèvecœur Paris, France (2013)
Prevention, Gimpel Fils Gallery, London, England (2012)
Siła Woli, Galeria Arsenał, Białystok, Poland (2012)
Restless Leg Saga, Galerie Gregor Staiger at Liste, Basel, Switzerland (2012)
The line where your appearance flips over into reality, Agape Enterprise, Brooklyn, NY (2012)
Shana Moulton, Allcott Gallery, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC (2012)
Decorations of the Mind II, Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich, Switzerland (2011)
Operaprima: Shana Moulton, white.fish.tank, Ancona, Italy (2011)
The Castle of Secrets, Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2010)
Puzzle Saga, Gimpel Fils Gallery, London, England (2010)
Sector Focus, Pianissimo at Art Forum Berlin, Berlin, Germany (2010)
Whispering Pines 6, 7, 8, The Box at The Wexner Center for the Arts, Cleveland, OH (2010)
Whispering Pines 4, David Castillo Gallery, Miami, FL (2010)
The Undiscovered Antique, New Commission 09, Art in General, New York, NY (catalog)
Whispering Pines by Shana Moulton, Broadcast Gallery, Dublin, Ireland (2009)
Subjective Projections, Bielefelder Kunstverein, Bielefeld, Germany (2009)
4 x 4, The Bluecoat, Liverpool, England (2009)
Repetitive Stress Injuries, Pianissimo, Milan, Italy (2008)
Whispering Pines, Contemporary Museum of Art, Uppsala, Sweden (2008)
Sand Saga, Broadway 1602, New York, NY (2008)
Whispering Pines, Gimpel Fils Gallery, "London, England" (2007)
Whispering Pines, Project Room, Bellwether Gallery, New York, NY (2007)

References

^ Beck, Graham T. "Focus: Shana Moulton". Frieze.
^ Shana Moulton
^ "Shana Moulton". Electronic Arts Intermix. Archived from the original on February 3, 2014. Retrieved February 1, 2014.
^ Fernald, Chris; Linnert, Nicolas; Garrard, Rachel; Kardel, Sissel; Kramer, Lola; Meager, Patrick (2013). "Productions of meaningful transformation within feminine consumer experiences". Silvershed Reader. 2.
^ Droitcour, Brian (14 April 2010). "The Object Whisperer: Shana Moulton's Whispering Pines". Rhizome.
^ Beck, Graham Frieze October 2012
^ Antonini, Marco (November 2009). "Shana Moulton". 269. Flash Art. Archived from the original on 2014-02-19. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)