bio / statement

about

 
 
Annie Leist was born and raised in Winston-Salem, NC.  She graduated from Wake Forest University in 1996 with a double major in studio art and mathematics.  Her liberal arts education continued at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, where she spent a year as a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar studying semiotics and word/image relationships.  In 1998, she moved to Washington, DC to work at the National G
allery of Art.  After three years managing a database housed in the Gallery’s Conservation Division, she enrolled at Mason Gross School of the Arts, a part of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ.  Upon receiving her MFA degree in 2003, she moved to Brooklyn, NY, where she currently lives with her husband.  Her art has been seen in numerous solo and group exhibitions over the years.  Though her studio is located in the Gowanus neighborhood of Brooklyn, her work is also shaped by her experiences as a pedestrian in numerous cities across the US and Europe.


 

ARTIST’S STATEMENT


Crosswalks, sidewalks, intersections, scaffolding - all are manifestations of the physical, social and psychological architectures of urban spaces.  They form a framework around, within, and through which city life and city people flow.  I am fascinated by the unwritten rules of public space that maintain, sometimes miraculously, the precarious order of the metropolis and its inhabitants.  Cityspace expands and collapses; it can be shaped or distorted by those who pass through it.  It hosts simultaneously, paradoxically, countless isolated individuals, as well as the single surging organism of the crowd.


Artmaking enables me to move through public places on my own terms, a feat that often eludes me in reality, as my personal navigation is mediated by my visual impairment.  I am legally blind and lack the depth perception provided by stereo vision.  I have a particular sensitivity to the unruly, deceptive, and beautiful elements of space and light, especially where they confront humanity and its need for orderly systems.  I used painting, video, photography, and performance to re-envision these locations, to present them in a new way that highlights their ambiguity and fleeting grace, elements so often overlooked in the daily rush of human routine.

Public Transport (Artist’s Proof, detail)

1995

lithograph, 21.5 by 30 inches