Window Dressing XXIII: Gabrielle Constantine
Exhibition Dates: Oct 31st - Nov 7th, 2022 (visible 24 hours/day)
Opening Reception: Friday, Nov 4th, 2022, 7-9 pm
Gabrielle Constantine (b. 1994) was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she received a double BFA in Sculpture and Fibers + Material studies at the Tyler School of Art. She’s currently living and working in Austin, TX pursuing an MFA at The University of Texas, Austin.
As a multidisciplinary artist, Constantine seeks to materialize identity. Leather patchwork quilts, chandelier plant hangers, lathed alcohol bottles, and Persian rug tablecloths are the icons of her practice. She combines domestic materials, food, pop culture, and elements of storefronts to make hybrid works that play with time on a generational scale. Within her objects and spaces, she utilizes counterfeit goods, facades, and faux luxury. Contact paper peels onto the wall performing as a slab of Carrara marble, longing to be seen as something it’s not. This sentiment allows her to present narratives about taste, humor, desperation, and violence embedded within the drive for success in the United States.
WE BUY GOLD is a series of sculptural photographic portraits that explore personhood, legacy, and identity as it relates to the buying, selling, and curation of objects in and out of the domestic sphere. These photographs toy with surface and setting to question modes of presentation. For Constantine, the materials we surround ourselves with function as a second skin that points to markers of class, race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. Just like props on a set or costumes on a stage we use objects and materials to perform, mask, and transcend our given identities.
