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.