SciArt Magazine - All Issues February 2016 | Page 14

STRAIGHT TALK

with Dana Sherwood

Dana Sherwood is a New York–based artist
who blurs the line between the domestic
and the wild through her mixed media and
documentary art. Concerned with “the
semiotics of desire and melancholia
present at the intersection of the two
worlds,” Sherwood’s work explores novel
ideas such as what it means, and what it
looks like, to create a picnic basket for
South African baboons. Sherwood has
exhibited internationally including at New
York’s Marianne Boesky Gallery, Mixed
Greens Gallery, Socrates Sculpture Park,
and Flux Factory as well as in Toronto and
throughout Europe.

By Danielle Kalamaras
Contributor & Blog Editor
DK: Your work crosses many media including drawing, video,
and installation. How does mixed media production motivate
your multi–disciplinary practice?
DS: For many artists I think the work is often driven by
the idea more than by the media. Of course, the physical
expression of the work must be paramount, and there
is a delicate line to walk to ensure complete symbiosis
of these two very important aspects. In my practice I
spend a long period of time doing fieldwork, such as
scoping out film sites, preparing food, and setting out
cameras, and my studio practice complements the kinds
of things I am doing in the field. It gives me space to
think through ideas and push myself to open the scope
of interpretation. I spend most of my studio time making the watercolors based on the fieldwork, writing, and
finally producing the finished work. It’s a long process
with many complementary elements.
DK: Your piece Crossing the Wild Line will be exhibited
at the Denny Gallery in NYC early next year. The work itself
is a food cart containing such items as cookware, cookbooks,
bowls of fruit, and meat. The piece was originally located in the
Botanical Garden of Brasília. Videos documented the natural
world’s interaction with the living sculpture, and the cart along
with these videos were later moved into the gallery spaces of
the Cultural Banco do Brazil, Brasília for the exhibition “Cru.”

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How does this journey between spaces add new dimensions to
your work?
DS: By having the work evolve in the two locations it
emphasizes the idea of the domestic versus the wilderness. Brasília is a really interesting city. It was built in
1960 in the center of the country, which was at that
point a vast wilderness hundreds of miles from civilization. Oscar Niemeyer, who planned the city, intentionally left large swaths of it undeveloped and left as savannah. Part one of the piece happens outdoors, and is only
seen by an audience of animals. During part two, people
are able to experience it inside the gallery. The video
monitor mounted onto the finished sculpture provides a
kind of surveillance view of what happened in the forest
and how the animals interacted with it.
DK: You were recently featured in “Humanimalands” at
SVA’s CP Projects Space. The works on view abandon the separation between humanity and nature and instead embrace an
intimate integration of the two, and include a meditation on the
‘anthropocene’—the term coined by Paul Crutzen and Eugene
Stoermer to denote the present time in which nature is
Right: Crossing the Wild Line (2015). 70” x 64” x 22”. Site view: Books,
glassware, aluminum, cooking implements, wood, varnish, various meat, fish,
vegetables, fruits and nuts. Image courtesy of the artist.

SciArt in America February 2016