Estelle Maisonett

Region: Northeast

 Bronx-born interdisciplinary artist Estelle Maisonett draws from her lived experiences to explore associations to identity, class, gender, and sexuality through the lens of material culture. With a practice that comprises photography, printmaking, sculpture, painting, and video, Maisonett creates life-size collages out of found and recycled materials and documentation. Her work features figures that are often devoid of the body, providing the viewer an opportunity to reflect on their own associations with a sense of place and materials. Maisonett explores how the relationship between object and environment informs perception of a figure or alludes to a prescribed identity. A social and interactive process, her interdisciplinary assemblages are forms of self and communal reflection that question how we create preconceived notions of value, economic status, race, culture, sexual orientation, and gender based on personal associations. Inspired by her own experiences, the work takes an explorative approach to the intersection of identity, and investigates how bias, stereotypes, or personal histories inform perception.