Mandy's profile
My video narratives, are informed by class, labor and physical agency. Domestic workers were a regular part of my upbringing and later on, working in various capacities I also became a caregiver. In working a series of service-industry jobs, I wore corporate uniforms and both the spaces and type of work (waitressing) were defined by physical redundancies in patterns of movement.
After attending art school (RISD), I worked in New York City as a print designer in the fashion industry. With a creative output that consisted of making patterns for fabric, I saw the connection between printed repetitions, and physical movements of the body. This is particularly true of how we move through varying spaces and social roles.
In 2016, I relocated to Baltimore to attend the Intermedia and Digital Arts MFA program at UMBC. Much of my research consisted of work with the Dance Department exploring issues of power and exclusion. In January of 2021, my six-channel video installation work Spirits of Promise and Loss was part of a group exhibition "Codex" at the Center for Visual Art, Culture and Design, in Baltimore.
In early 2023, I had a solo exhibit of my work at the Peale Center, in Baltimore, featuring the video installation Journey of the Invader Spirit, generated during an artist residency in Brazil. During that residency I worked with the staff and a local Capoeira group to create the project.
Over the years, I have worked with varying types of communities including civil servants, rural youth, and urban break dance artists. Additionally I have performed in the works of Maja Bekan (Netherlands/Serbia) and Ward Shelley (New York), the video work of Shelly Silver (New York) and created performance projects with Kelly Kivland, Rebecca Davis and Nora Stevens (New York), Gabriella Dennery, Director of Grace Drums (Newark), and sound projects with Bernhard Gal (Vienna), and Charlie Morrow (Helsinki, New York).
My performance, video and film work have been exhibited and screened internationally in galleries, museums, and festivals including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Kunstlerhaus e.V., Hamburg, and CINESONIKA in Vancouver. Currently teaching at the Baltimore School of the Arts, I have been visiting faculty in Digital Arts at Pratt Institute, and Rutgers University. I have also been a Visiting Artist at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the University of Minnesota, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago –among others.
Grants and honors include fellowships from the Tree of Life Foundation (2021), the Maryland State Arts Council (2023, 2021), the Puffin Foundation (2023, 2016), the Meyer Foundation (2014), Illinois Arts Council (1997), the Council on the Arts and Humanities on Staten Island (2014), and the, the New York Foundation for the Arts (2008), the New York State Council on the Arts (2014) as well as residencies from the University of Wisconsin (2000), the Center for Metamedia, Czech Republic (1999), Cut'n Burns Video Residency in Brooklyn, NY (2005/06), Ohio State University's Wexner Center (2009/12), and the Sacatar Institute in Bahia, Brazil (2019).
