Desirée Holman

Though primarily a visual artist, Desirée Holman’s work casts her simultaneously in the role of performer and director. Even in her works on paper, rendered in colored pencil, gouache, and other media, the artist is creating characters, at times playing them herself through both performances and portraits. Masks are a connective symbolic thread throughout Holman’s work, as one immediately accessible icon of performance and shifting identities. Beyond the page, Holman develops elaborate plots filled with exaggerated characters in three dimensions as well. Like many of her multi-media video installations, Breath Holes (2005) incorporates film, large format photography, and sculpture in creating a work that is both a narrative and an environment. Holman's stylized character often take the form of puppets and dolls, which, as the artist describes, “includes costumes, dolls, masks, full-body wearable sculptures that I design and construct myself.” Holman’s characters are overflowing, cartoon-like at times, embodying hybrid- dentities. The artist has exhibited both in the United States and internationally, including The Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art.