The sculpture / painting hybrids in Listeners obstruct, frame and direct vision and movement. They always imply bodies: people who look through, walk around, and peer over. Simultaneously, the inert objects are dynamic as they reflect light and sway slightly when a viewer walks by. 

Since the mid-2000s, Fabienne Lasserre’s work has been deeply indebted to feminist thought. She thinks of her early sculptures as bodies envisioned outside of traditional dichotomies such as male/female, self/other, inside/outside. With time, these interests extended to the context surrounding bodies rather than to corporeality itself. Thinking of the body as a locus for political and philosophical metaphors, she makes objects that can enclose or frame a human. In these new works, Lasserre explores form, shape, and color in order to point to the many ways in which movement and location affect our ways of relating to the world and to one another. 

The installation will be activated by a commissioned dance by choreographer, Beth Gill and an accompanying sound piece by experimental composer, Jon Moniaci. The new work will premiere at the Athenaeum on March 15 and 16.

This exhibition is supported by a grant from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and a Public Impact Grant from the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.