Colette Copeland

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Colette Copeland is a interdisciplinary visual artist, arts educator, social activist and cultural critic/writer whose work examines issues surrounding gender, death and contemporary culture. Sourcing personal narratives and popular media, she utilizes video, photography, performance and sculptural installation to question societal roles and the pervasive influence of media, and technology on our communal enculturation.

Becoming ColetteInstallation ArtSeriesVideo Art & Short Film

Becoming Colette

Tags: book sculptures literary history performative journey namesake french author

Copeland’s practice, like the space, is not bound by medium but instead flows in and around aspects of video work. The language of her work is literary, both through reference and allusion; her narratives are filled with the unsaid—the quiet, unscripted moments between two people. She seems to be interested in the happenings that influence our language, rather than the dictums themselves.

Lee Escobedo—Writer

Exhibitions

Becoming Colette: The Reading Room Gallery

Videos

Le Grand Vefour
Glass Menagerie
Musee de Colette
1
5
Glass Menagerie

Audio Excerpt

Colette Reads Colette is an original sound work composed, performed, and arranged by Dallin B. Peacock layered with 1960 recording of author Colette reading excerpts of her novels in French.


Artist Statement

Ever since I was a child, people have asked me if I was named after the infamous French writer Colette. “Of course” was my standard reply. As a young adult I pored over Colette’s books and later her autobiography looking for similar characteristics between my namesake and me.

Becoming Colette is a multi-dimensional project involving a performative journey into the literary history of Paris and more specifically into the fictional stories of author Colette. This past summer I filmed at the sites where Colette lived and wrote, imagining her life, her struggles and triumphs.

The resulting exhibition features five video book sculptures and a series of prints that embody visual and textual palimpsests, simultaneously revealing and obscuring the aspects of both the woman and the writer, as well as her connection to place.

Also premiering at the exhibit is an original sound work composed, performed and arranged by Dallin B. Peacock fused with a 1960 recording of Colette reading excerpts of Gigi, Chéri and Flore et Pomone in French.

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