Bastienne Schmidt: Home Stills September 29, 2010

This exhibition and book project uses photographs, large scale mixed-media pieces and film still images to explore female gender identity as it is refracted through popular culture. Schmidt challenges our visions of a domestic utopia with 'tableaux' photographs of herself in the role of a 'housewife' that re-stage many disconcertingly familiar scenarios and circumstances. Working strictly in her own home environment of suburban Long Island, Schmidt takes on the social context of a world of suburban fragmentation and loneliness with the presentation of the housewife character as a wandering, rootless protagonist.