“Ouroboros”
Introduction by Sura Wood
commentary by Katherine Krause
7×7, November 2013
View excerpt here
Combining large-format photography, sculpture, video, and works on paper, Desirée Holman navigates complex ideology with relative ease by inserting the unexpected into a conventional framework. Much of her work addresses myths of identity, involving faces obscured by masks. In her 2009 project Reborn, Holman captured women cradling fake babies in images that forced viewers to question their perceptions of reality. For this show, we selected one of her more recent color-saturated paintings of auras – a popular spiritual symbol, evocative of halos, suggesting the fields of energy that encircles us. A similar image from Holman’s Aura series is pictured here.