Press Room

Fellow Focus: Camille Hoffman
Pieceable Kingdom
January 18–April 8, 2018

New York, NY (January 4, 2018)

The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) is pleased to present Pieceable Kingdom, an exhibition of new mixed-media artworks by Camille Hoffman that offer meditations on Manifest Destiny and its latent representation in the Romantic American landscape. The exhibition will run from January 18 to April 8, 2018, in the Museum’s Project Space. This marks the third installment of MAD’s Fellow Focus series, which is dedicated to highlighting the work of alumni of the Van Lier Fellowship, awarded thrice yearly as part of the Museum’s Artist Studios Program.

Hoffman’s work reflects on how histories of race, gender, and power are often embedded within influential American landscape paintings of the nineteenth century through their depictions of light, nature, the frontier, and borders. In her work, the artist explores the interconnectedness of her own identity with American colonialism, environmental policy, and contemporary pop culture. With materials collected from everyday life, including holiday-themed tablecloths, discarded medical records, nature calendars, plastic bags, and paint, Hoffman crafts layered geographies in which fragments of cultural objects are chromatically twisted and blended into complex wholes.

“The intensity with which Camille transforms and manipulates her materials into stunning surfaces and compositions is matched by her fierce dedication to both historical research and critical exploration of the global effects of Western imperialism in its past and present forms,” said Danny Orendorff, MAD’s Curator of Public Programs. “Her focus on her craft and dedication to sharing it with the art-viewing public made her an incredible addition to the Museum as a Van Lier Fellow. We are thrilled that the work she created here and since will be on view at MAD in completion.”

Born in 1987 in Chicago, Illinois, Camille Hoffman received her BFA in Community Arts and Painting from California College of the Arts in 2009 and her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale School of Art in 2015. She has worked for over a decade as an arts educator and community organizer in Phoenix, the San Francisco Bay Area, New Haven, Brooklyn, and Queens. She is a past recipient of the Carol Schlosberg Memorial Prize for excellence in painting from Yale University, a National Endowment for the Arts scholarship, and a Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarship. Hoffman has shown throughout the United States and in Europe, in exhibitions including Music and Conversation: East of the Wallace Line at the Yale University Art Gallery and MASIVAMENTE at Espai Cultural Biblioteca Azorín in Valencia, Spain, and participated in the Nuit Blanche arts festival in Paris, France. She recently completed a yearlong residency at Queenspace in Long Island City, New York, and is currently artist-in-residence at Wave Hill in the Bronx.

Pieceable Kingdom is organized by Danny Orendorff, Curator of Public Programs, for the MAD Education Department.

ABOUT THE NEW YORK COMMUNITY TRUST VAN LIER FELLOWSHIP AT MAD
The New York Community Trust Van Lier Fellowship at MAD has served five emerging artists since June 2016. The fellowship is designed to reach young artists at a critical juncture when financial and professional support will allow them to take their careers to the next level. Fellows are given a dedicated studio where they work alongside residents of the Artist Studios Program, in addition to other professional development opportunities. Both fellows and residents work in a live studio environment where visitors are encouraged to engage with artists as they work. The fellowship furthers the Museum’s commitment to providing engaging opportunities at the intersection of artist, object, and personal experience. Applicants selected for the fellowship at MAD present a mature body of work that reveals a mastery of techniques, methods, processes, and materials, and that demonstrates developed concepts, ideas, and themes. Fellows are selected by the Artist Studios Selection Committee, which includes Museum staff and outside professionals in the fields of art, craft, and design.

ABOUT THE MUSEUM OF ARTS AND DESIGN
The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) champions contemporary makers across creative fields and presents the work of artists, designers, and artisans who apply the highest level of ingenuity and skill. Since the Museum’s founding in 1956 by philanthropist and visionary Aileen Osborn Webb, MAD has celebrated all facets of making and the creative processes by which materials are transformed, from traditional techniques to cutting-edge technologies. Today, the Museum’s curatorial program builds upon a rich history of exhibitions that emphasize a cross-disciplinary approach to art and design, and reveals the workmanship behind the objects and environments that shape our everyday lives. MAD provides an international platform for practitioners who are influencing the direction of cultural production and driving twenty-first-century innovation, and fosters a participatory setting for visitors to have direct encounters with skilled making and compelling works of art and design.

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