Janet Loren Hill

Region: MFA Annual

Website: http://www.janetlorenhill.com

City / State: Astoria, NY

Through painting, fibers, installation, video, and soft sculpture, I challenge historical norms in figurative painting that are based on a female muse and male genius artist, presenting my vocal female voice as a counter. Mining my experience of navigating the fluidity of identity throughout a long-term partnership with my husband that began when we were fifteen, I flip traditional gender roles in portraiture.

I use textile techniques such as weaving, knitting, crochet, latch hook, and basketry to refer to their historical use by revolutionary female activist groups, their embodiment of domestic memories, and the metaphorical possibilities of their entanglement of two threads/reeds/grids to make a whole.

I invite the audience into vulnerable moments in my marriage, providing an empowered and questioning female voice that asks where societal expectations and identity construction dangerously collide, and what it means to exist as an ever-evolving person beside another. Sensuous paint, rounded protruding surfaces that do not fit together perfectly, and humorous yarn that conjures collective memories of domestic interiors all contribute to a fluctuating narrative of an ongoing lived experience.