Erin Currier uses paint, collage and trash to create images that comment on the global political climate and the effects of consumerism. You can purchase Currier posters at the new Parks Gallery Store.
Erin was honored this past spring with an exhibition of her ongoing series, “Schoolgirls and Schoolboys,” at Santa Fe’s Center for Contemporary Arts.
Although this year's exhibition at the Parks Gallery is now over, there are still a few gems left. Erin's show,“School Yards,” was inspired by her recent travels in Greece, Turkey, and Northern Africa.
Click on a thumbnail to enlarge…
Artist's Statement:
Today’s globalized, multinational, international, multilingual, on-line, on-the-grid, for-profit, fuel-driven, free-trading world of satellite-dished-out telenovelas that force feed fast food, Kevlar, Teflon, Zoloft, Botox, and tomato sauce, is one of increasingly fierce conflicts of interest and interest rates, between the conquerors and conquered, dominators and dominated, capitalists and workers, employers and unemployed, overdeveloped and underdeveloped, overweight and underfed, first-class and so-called Third World, oppressors and oppressed, and the blessed and the damned. As an artist born into a system which represents the former, I consequently seek to know and to make known the plight of the ill-understood latter: the nameless, faceless, voiceless, and marginalized, who, as Eduardo Galeano so eloquently puts it (We Say No), “Make history from below and from inside rather than to continue to suffer history from above and from outside.”P>
As a medium for my work, I have chosen materials that are readily available: the refuse and the packaging of products produced and consumed by every nation, for every nation, and translated in every language, on the planet. I travel the world’s streets collecting the discarded with which to portray the discarded: the women, the mothers, the martyrs,the mothers of martyrs, barrio dwellers, day laborers, forced laborers, slave-wage laborers, shoeshine boys, lady boys, schoolgirls, gang girls, cholos, guerilla poets, Sandinistas, Zapatistas, Chavistas, the indigenous, the indigent, imprisoned, objectified, nullified, vilified, unfortified, unrecognized, silent, forgotten, and ordinary. I especially attempt to lend voice to those who fight for human rights, social change, and who resist unjust established orders. I thus seek to discover humanity and to transform reality by humanizing it through art.
Erin Currier
Born: 1975, Haverhill, MA
Home: Santa Fe, NM
Education: College of Santa Fe, BFA Costume Design
Resume
Selected One Person Exhibitions:
2009: “Schoolyards,” Parks Gallery, Taos, NM
2009: “Schoolgirls and Schoolboys” Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, NM
2009: “Portenas,” Masottatorres Contemporanea, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2008: “Miss World,” Parks Gallery, Taos, NM
2007: “America Below,” Parks Gallery, Taos, NM
2007: “In Solidarity,” Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Embassy, Washington D.C.
2006: “From Vietnam to Venezuela, Bandits and Beauty Queens,” Parks Gallery, Taos
2005: “Mothers and Martyrs,” Parks Gallery, Taos, NM
2005: “Small Works,” Parks Gallery, Taos, NM
2004: “The Other America,” Parks Gallery, Taos, NM
2004: “Selected Works,” TOPS Gallery, Malibu, CA
2003: “Liberation Series,” College of Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM
2003: “Liberation Series,” Parks Gallery, Taos, NM
Selected Group Exhibitions:
2009: “Salvo”, Jack Fischer Gallery, San Fransisco, CA
2007-08: Masottatorres Contemporanea, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2008: “FOCA Show,” Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM
2007-08: “Originals,” National Museum of Women in the Arts, Harwood Museum, NM
2007: “Lifting the Veil: New Mexico Women and the Tricultural Myth,” Institute of American Indian Arts Museum, Santa Fe, NM
2005-08: MJ Higgins Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2005: “Heroes,” Center for Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, NM
2005: “La Madre Poderosa,” Harwood Museum, Taos, NM
2003: “FOCA Exhibition,” Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, NM
2003: “El Corazon,” Millicent Rogers Museum, Taos, NM
2002: “El Dia de la Muerte,” Martinez Hacienda, Taos, NM
1999-2006 Tops Gallery, Malibu, CA
Selected Books and Publications:
100 Artists of the Southwest, Douglas Bullis, Schiffer, 2006
Pedagogy and Praxis in the Age of Empire, Peter McLaren, Nathalia Jaramillo, Rowman and Littlefield, 2006
Capitalists and Conquerors, Peter McLaren, Rowman and Littlefield, 2005
Teaching Against Global Capitalism, Peter McLaren, Rowman and Littlefield, 2005
Buenos Aires Herald, 2009
Pagina 12, Argentina, 2009
Paseante Extranerjero, Argentina, 2009
Raw Guide, Argentina, 2009
THE Magazine, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2004, 2003, 1999
Santa Fean Magazine, 2009, 2007, 2004, 2003
Welt der Frau Magazine, Austria, 2008
Washington Post, 2007
Tele Sur, 2007
Pacifica Radio, 2007
Bottom Line, 2006
Malibu Magazine, 2005
Art News, 2004
Atomica, 2004
American Style Magazine, 2003
Utne Reader, 2002
National Public Radio, 2002, 2000
New Mexico Magazine, 2002
Su Casa Magazine, 2001
Selected Collections
Bernardo Bertolucci
Sherilynn Bevel
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela Embassy
Lisa Bonet
President Hugo Chavez
John Cusack
Joan Cusack
Whoopi Goldberg
Mr. & Mrs. Mel Gibson
Linda Hamilton
Coretta Scott King
Julia Roberts
Mr. & Mrs. Carlos Santana
Martin Sheen
Dean Stockwell