Bio
Alicia Chester is a graduate student in the Visual and Critical Studies program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she also obtained her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2003 concentrating in photography and was awarded a BFA Fellowship upon graduation. She studied abroad at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris in the atelier of Annette Messager and interned with Chicago photographer Alan Cohen. Alicia is a two-time City of Chicago Community Arts Assistance Program grant recipient, is a co-founding member of the new visual studies journal canon, and has assisted in the production of several art projects, including documenting Wafaa Bilal's recent performance/installation Domestic Tension at FLATFILEgalleries. She worked in administration at Northwestern University, where she completed a Certificate in Museum Studies in 2005, and at the Chicago Artists' Coalition. Alicia's areas of interest include history and theory of photography, feminist theory, and modernity.
Curriculum Vitae
Contact
alicia.d.chester [at] gmail.com
Links
CANON
Putting theory into practice: co-founding member of the new visual studies journal based at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
ONLINE GALLERY
Online Gallery on the Chicago Artists' Coalition website.
0 + 0 = 0
Lighting designer and assistant director of photography for this Expressionist-inspired digital stop motion animation by Daniel Torrente. Honorable Mention, 2003 Adobe Design Achievement Awards.
Exhibitions
September 3-28, 2008
Effe Leven Gallery
213 W. Institute Place - Fourth Floor
Chicago, IL 60610
Hours: Wed-Sun 10-5
www.effelevengallery.com
October 13-31, 2008
Submissions Deadline: Sept 18, 2008
CALL FOR ENTRIES: A Hirsute Affair
A juried exhibition curated by Alicia Chester
Gallery X, 280 S Columbus Dr #113
Chicago, IL 60603
Hours: Tues-Fri 12:30-5:30, Sat 10:30-3
www.sugs.info
Statement
I use figure and gesture as metaphor in my work, creating controlled spaces in which subjects are suspended in moments of possibility. I construct relationships among figures within the frame or through juxtaposing photographs in installations. Every subject and object asserts its significance. My images are highly constructed and often look to art history for inspiration as well as to provide a framework for examining my concepts. Often my images or installations are large in scale in order to command a certain physical presence and to encourage viewers to draw a comparison to tableau-style painting. Though figurative and theatrical, I do not consider my images to be portraiture but rather metaphoric, symbolic, or evocative in nature.
I work to create perfect moments composed of ordinary characters in mundane surroundings: carefully choreographed moments as they happen in fiction and imagination, but yet as they never do in the mess of reality. I wish to reveal each figure, whether simply a face or a more complex character, as possessing numerous layers of meaning and interpretation, and to endow each of these revelations with subtlety, vulnerability, quiet suspense, and the idea that below the pristine surface, something is about to rupture.
I choose to work in photography since, given its history and various connotations, it possesses a unique ability to creatively engage social issues and to challenge individual perceptions. The challenge lies in creating work that accomplishes this without becoming didactic and while allowing concepts to remain multifaceted and layered. I have struggled with how to integrate art practice and social consciousness and with how art may directly effect change in society. Though I have not arrived at a conclusion, I maintain faith in poetics and honor personal metaphor and symbolism in my work. Through artistic praxis I open spaces for contemplation in which intellect, social consciousness, spirituality, and sensuality may intersect and coexist.