A Real Mother For You: New work by Becca Baldwin & Brian McNearny
The work of Brooklyn- based Becca Baldwin and Chicago- based Brian McNearney shares a deadpan approach to cultural appropriation and a dissemination of historical memes.
Baldwin’s new work is a reflective study of gender and sexuality paradigms. As an “art history mash-up” she willingly references Cindy Sherman and Nancy Angelo’s Feminist video, “The Nun and the Deviant”. Casting herself as the nun and the deviant, Becca deconstructs identity in a dialogue with her Feminist Foremothers.
McNearney’s work spans wider cultural terrain, examining overlooked cultural phenomena. Sampling imagery from funk album covers, the world’s strongest man, and eccentric Central Asian dictators, McNearney aims to ideally influence the viewer “to make connections and specific relationships between the works that engage the temporal experience of viewing and hopefully activate the work on a number of levels, from flat-footed humor to reflections on mortality.”