Claire Stigliani: American (b. 1983)

Claire Stigliani was born in 1983 in Alexandria, VA, and spent several years of her early girlhood in Austria. Her life since has been a peripatetic one, with extended sojourns in Portland, OR., Cedar Falls, IA, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and elsewhere. She is currently enrolled at the University of Wisconsin in Madison where she is in her final semester, finishing the requirement for a master’s degree in art, and serving as a teaching assistant. She will have a solo show of her drawings and paintings at the Dean Jensen Gallery, opening 23 July 2010.

My practice has consistently been occupied with looking at the many and varied myths and icons involving the female body. I look at fairy tales, women in history, the 90’s supermodel and now my own image. I am interested in how women are represented in their most socially idealized form and conversely in their most vulnerable state. The female form is imbued with political significance undermined by the traditional erotic representations of women by male artists. I am intrigued by the notion of the eroticized young woman as seen through the lenses of youth, sexuality, and perceived power.

For me, the female figure represents an intersection of contraries: the attractive and the grotesque, constructed identity, the rise to sexual power, and the inevitable fall from grace. The complexities of the human condition are evident in these contradictions, and they coalesce into a sort of beauty verging on the sublime. It is strange and wonderful to me that the sublime can be found in the human figure.

My drawings utilize gender specific methods and symbolism. I often incorporate traditional feminine lace stitching patterns, ribbon and lace. I am drawn to old, discarded paper. I am attracted by the fact that this detritus is considered marginal and is commonly relegated to the discard pile. The paper has a castoff quality that seems to suit the awkward fragility of my drawing style. The fact that this discarded material exists outside of the purview of the extant power structure is an added attraction.

I see my work as fairy tale-making in the sense that I love simple narratives with unconscious, subversive or underground ideas about love, hate, good and bad, sexuality, innocence and gender.

Although I frame these ideas within a largely narrative structure, I like the idea of leaving the narrative open-ended, enabling the viewer to come to it with her or his own ideas and responses.

-- Claire Stigliani