She was born in Vancouver, Canada, and now lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. But there is a Milwaukee connection for Sara Cwynar and her artwork in the upcoming Milwaukee Art Museum exhibition, “Sara Cwynar: Image Model Muse.”
At 39, Cwynar has already created a name for herself as an emerging contemporary artist, working in the areas of photography, collage and film, among others. Her MAM exhibit is her first solo exhibition in the U.S., and it’s easy to understand her growing national and international reputation (she won the Art Basel Fair 2016 Baloise Prize) upon viewing her work.
Cwynar asks us to reexamine how beauty has evolved over time and challenges us to consider how capitalism and commercialism have created a standard for what is commonly considered to be “beautiful.” These are “systems of power,” as she calls it, that create, and control, consumer desire.
“The work from the collection gives some context for where I am working from, particularly in terms of the history of representations of women,” she explains. “This exhibit is actually a continuation of another exhibit I did in Minneapolis of the same title. In the Milwaukee space, we have a lot more room, so I am expanding the work on view and showing other works from the collection adjacent to my own work.”
MAM curator Lisa Sutcliffe has followed Cwynar’s work and artistic evolution since 2012, when Cwynar first came to her attention. “As a curator, I’m always looking,” explains Sutcliffe. “I remember her using visual language and using that language with many different themes and how it fit together.” Sutcliffe points out that MAM has been a “platform” for a number of emerging artists. In Cwynar’s case, she just happened to come across our town in some local archived photos.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
‘Things Don’t Have to Be the Way They Are’
The “Milwaukee connection” to Cwynar’s work was found on eBay, in the archives of former commercial photography business Graphic Studio. She reworked those vintage images to bring them into the present. “I reworked a still life of a transparent phone with a new text that talks about contemporary politics and speech, the idea of ‘transparency’ and speaking clearly, and the question of who gets to speak,” Cwynar explains. “I was using these old photos almost as vessels to talk about things happening in the current moment.”
Speaking of “vessels,” her work also includes a very familiar Milwaukee-based image: the Miller Beer logo. Using photos from that same archive, Cwynar reworked the images which feature large male hands demonstrating Miller Beer packaging.
A cornerstone of the exhibit are three films she’s made that visitors will be able to view; these are Soft Film (2016), Rose Gold (2017) and Cover Girl (2018). The trilogy resonates with her views and span the personal to the theoretical, focusing on the value of objects to the pressures on women to be “beautiful.”
“Soft Film is definitely a precursor to Rose Gold in that it is more specifically about value, how arbitrary it is, about feminism and power dynamics and the idea that the way we value objects can be connected to the way we value humans under capitalism,” Cwynar explains. “Rose Gold looks more specifically at technology, a semiotics of advertising and the way that color has a history, has an emotional valence and can be used to sell things. In a sense, it begins where Soft Film left off.” The most recent film, Cover Girl, is an obvious play on the classic makeup brand and features Cwynar’s muse, Tracy, who is also in a number of still-life portraits. “Cover Girl is kind of a separate project in a way,” she explains, adding that “it is more about pressures on women to conform to certain images.”
Given that this is her first solo exhibition nationally, what would Cwynar like visitors to consider upon viewing her work? “I would like them to think about what it feels like to live under capitalism, and how a lot of the decisions that seem inevitable and predetermined could be different,” she says. “Things don’t have to be the way they are.”
Sara Cwynar: Image Model Muse is on view March 8 through July 21 in the Herzfeld Center for Photography and Media Arts at the Milwaukee Art Museum. For more information, visit mam.org.
