Carrie Schneider: Reading Women

For her third solo show at moniquemeloche, Carrie Schneider will present her new single-channel video projection “Reading Women,” which was exhibited in progress last summer at the Mattress Factory Art Museum, Pittsburgh. The photographs from the “Reading Women” series will be the focus of moniquemeloche’s solo booth by Carrie Schneider at The Armory Show March 6-9, 2014.

To create “Reading Women,” I asked 70 female friends – mostly artists, writers and musicians – to each sit while reading a book of her choice, written by a female author, in her own home or studio for the duration of two hours using side-by-side photographic and video cameras. There is something rare about the depth of concentration experienced while reading, and it’s this moment I’m after: when the sitter loses awareness of the camera – and any semblance of a pose – forgetting her cultural performance.

Whether she chose to read the hardcover first edition autographed copy of Angela Davis’ An Autobiography (1974) borrowed from her late grandmother, or chose to read (for the eighth time) the dog-eared, used paperback version of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse (1927) – the sitter, her choice of book and its author, become linked. To underscore the importance of this connection, each photograph is titled after the sitter, the author, and the title and publication year of the book itself. Cumulatively, the archive reveals a constellation of influences and knowledge among my creative peers.

- Carrie Schneider 2014

Carrie Schneider (born Chicago, 1979; lives NY) earned her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2001 and her MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007. Schneider attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and had a year-long Fulbright Fellowship at the Kuvataideakatemia Finnish Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki in 2008. Schneider has had solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; The Mattress Factory Art Museum, Pittsburgh; Finnish Museum of Photography Helsinki; Galleri KiT/Trondheim Academy of Art, Norway; and Gallery Kalhama & Piippo Helsinki. Group exhibitions and screenings include Haggerty Museum, Milwaukee; 2011 Pittsburgh Biennial at The Andy Warhol Museum; The Kitchen NY; Dumbo Arts Center Brooklyn; Columbia College Chicago; Artspace, New Haven, and the Kunsthal Charlottenborg Copenhagen, Denmark. Her work is in the permanent collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Photography Chicago, and the Centre Canadien d’Architecture, Montreal, Quebec. In 2014, Schneider will be an artist in residence at Cannonball in Miami, Florida, and will have a solo show “Burning House,” including both the video and photo series, at the University Galleries at Illinois State University opening January 21st. Her ongoing collaboration with choreographer and MacArthur “Genius” Grant award winner Kyle Abraham will next appear as a video alongside his performance series at the MCA Chicago February 20-23.

Artist talk with Natasha Egan, Director of the Museum of Contemporary Photography Saturday, February 1 at 1PM, hosted by SAIC Sullivan Galleries room 782, located at 33 S. State St., 7th floor.