Wisconsin Triennial Brochure 2019

DIANE LEVESQUE KENOSHA
Dancing Bear and Savoyard, from The Penny Dreadful Project, 2018 •
Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 40 inches • Courtesy of the artist
Diane Levesque’s ongoing series of paintings and drawings, The Penny Dreadful
Project, reinterprets themes depicted in Staffordshire figurines produced
between 1810 and 1835. These popular collectibles portrayed idealized
pastimes as well as disturbing and often violent contemporaneous events
from infamous murders to public hangings. Despite this, or perhaps because
of it, the figurines were acquired as decorative household items. These themes
also corresponded to what could be read in “penny dreadfuls,” popular serial
literature from the same era with sensational storylines. With bold color and
energetic brushstrokes, Levesque heightens the implied violence and sexuality
of the stories, transforming the decorative motifs of the Victorian era into social
commentary that is unsettling yet alluring.
GINA LITHERLAND CEDARBURG
Yggdrasil, 2018 • Oil on panel, 20 x 40 inches • Courtesy of the artist and
Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago
Gina Litherland’s immaculately rendered paintings reference the artistic
tradition of magic realism and the narrative plotlines found in folktales.
Litherland creates her own mythologies in her wood panel paintings, twisting
familiar iconographies and storylines into new realms of the uncanny where
young girls befriend tigers and join packs of dogs howling at the moon. In her
painting Yggdrasil, Litherland illustrates the Tree of Life from Norse Mythology,
the three “Norns” (female beings who control the fate of both gods and
humans) appear as girls eerily floating beneath the tree, lit from below, toying
with their environment. Litherland imbues her mystical worlds with tales of
female empowerment, making them places where young girls and women
have immense power and magic over their incongruous surroundings.
DAKOTA MACE MADISON
Na’ashch’áá’ I, 2018 • Cyanotype/digital media on paper, 24 x 24 inches •
Courtesy of the artist
Dakota Mace is a Diné (Navajo) artist who reinterprets the symbolic abstractions
of Diné creation stories, cosmologies, and social structures. Mace uses a
combination of traditional and nontraditional materials, taking Diné visual culture
and design out of the realm of weaving and into printmaking and photography.
Subverting expectations of Diné designs as utilitarian or decorative objects, Mace
transforms and preserves these traditions while bringing them firmly into the
fine art realm, engaging in an act of cultural reclamation. The abstracted symbol
of Na’ashjéii Asdzáá (Spider Woman) is the most prevalent motif seen in Mace’s
designs and one of the most important deities in the Diné Bahané (creation story)
as she was the first to weave her web of the universe while spreading Hózhó
Náhásdlíí’ (beauty way) teachings of balance within the mind, body, and soul.
Mace affirms the importance of the cultural signifiers while embracing her belief
of hajisí dígíí dahiistłó biihji nilłx (we weave what we see).
FRANCISCO MORA FOX POINT
Travesía en la Panza de un Burro (Voyage in a Donkey’s Belly), 2018 •
Graphite on paper, 12 x 16 inches • Courtesy of the artist
Francisco Mora’s drawings reveal the imaginary world of his dreams. Playing with
scale, he transforms humans into animals and back again, sending his fantastical
characters on journeys through a mysterious jungle. Born and raised in Mexico City,
Mora draws on the visual traditions of Mexican surrealism in which Mexican artists
merged their own histories and folklore with the ideas that had defined surrealism
throughout Europe. The resulting works of art transformed and expanded the
movement through new stylistic innovations and cultural references. Mora’s body
of work catalogues his imagination, in which a giant child, a wizard, a woman
traveling inside of a donkey’s stomach, a fish-man, and a bird-man all intersect
in a visionary, hand-penciled world.
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