Shanti Grumbine

“And so let us think seriously about the difference between repetition and insistence” -- Gertrude Stein, Lectures in America


I transform common items into devotional objects situated between the familiar and symbolic using drawing, printmaking, paper-cutting, and sculpture. I remake articles of cultural production and consumption by hand, stripping them of branding, shifting their context, and teasing out the aesthetic elements of value and desire. Through the excision and reconfiguration of newspaper pages, I gesture towards ideas of censorship, bias, and the effects of trauma on language. In all of my work, the formal conventions of mass media and industry collide with the more metaphysical aspects of knowing and believing: hands-on craft, repetition, beauty, and ritual.