Elaine Cameron-Weir

'(Exploded View) or 'everywhere I go people know the part I'm playing''

In her artistic practice, Elaine Cameron-Weir questions the individual and collective conditions that shape our perceptions of the world. Her work is informed by belief systems from science and religion to industrial and military paradigms and the ways in which they influence how people seek and experience meaning. Cameron-Weir often incorporates objects and materials originally intended for practical use in these fields, recontextualizing the histories and connotations they have acquired.

Signature image for Elaine Cameron-Weir exhibition
Elaine Cameron-Weir, "Metaphor," 2016, stainless steel, lead, and sand, 107 x 77 3/4 x 27 in. Courtesy of the artist and Hannah Hoffman, Los Angeles. Photo by Blaine Campbell.

A new site-specific work commissioned by SCAD MOA, Dressing for Windows (Exploded View) or ‘everywhere I go people know the part I’m playing’ is a contemplation of the ways symbolic weight and false equivalencies come into play in the models we use to interpret and intuit our lived experience. Emphasizing the altar-like architecture of the museum’s Jewel Boxes, which are publicly visible yet physically inaccessible, the artist embraces the dual proposition of these spaces as both façade and display case. Engaging with each space using a repeatable staging system, the installation poses questions about truth and entanglement while implicating the onlooker as a fundamental aspect in this tableau.

Each brick arch is installed with Cameron-Weir’s signature pulley and counterweight configuration, allowing the artist to establish relationships between different objects through the schematics of measurement. The work presents itself as an instruction manual — a technical tool, rather than didactic or purely interpretive. Like a three-dimensional exploded view diagram, a mode of visual communication that details how parts relate but does not ascribe meaning, it clearly indexes each object in dialogue with the whole yet refuses a simplified narrative.

About the artist

Elaine Cameron-Weir (b. 1985 Red Deer, Alberta, Canada) lives and works in New York. Most recently her work was the subject of an institutional solo show at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington and was on view at the UC Berkeley Art Museum as part of New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century. Select solo exhibitions include exhibit from a dripping personal collection, Dortmunder Kunstverein, Germany; Outlooks: Elaine Cameron-Weir, Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, New York; and viscera has questions about itself at the New Museum, New York. She has shown both in the U.S. and abroad in group exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Remai Modern, Saskatoon, Canada; GAMeC, Bergamo, Italy; and FUTURA, Prague, and has participated in the Montreal and Belgrade Biennials and the Fellbach Triennial. Her work is held in the collections of the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Art Gallery of Ontario; and Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, Claremont, Calif., among others. She will participate in the upcoming 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia curated by Cecilia Alemani.

Install Views

Credits

Dressing for Windows (Exploded View) or ‘everywhere I go people know the part I’m playing’ is organized by SCAD MOA curator DJ Hellerman. It is presented as part of SCAD deFINE ART 2022.

More on view