The Red Barn Studio Museum welcomes performance and installation artist Mary Grace Bernard as Artist-in-Residence, March 31-April 10.
Mary Grace’s interest in art was first sparked at a young age when their mother provided them with painting supplies, and she started making large-scale paintings of flowers to donate to the cystic fibrosis foundation. Later while working on their second MA in art history at Denver University, Mary Grace discovered performance art. She was impacted by its power to directly and provocatively express their personal experiences with cystic fibrosis.
Mary Grace plans to use their residency to read, research, and write in preparation for creating new performances and artworks. Currently, Mary Grace is researching the historical ties between the Church and medicine and considering how this history can be tied into their performance practice. Mary Grace’s performance and installation art explores disability, identity, and non-normative experiences including time, productivity, dependency, the human experience, and how technology and assistive devices become part of the body. She examines the way that systems such as spirituality and medicine influence ideas about the body and how we care for ourselves and others. Mary Grace hopes to create conversations that connect personal stories to broader cultural conversations and invites visitors to reconsider assumptions about independence, identity, and the link between our personal experiences and larger social systems. Mary Grace's work and practice aims to open conversations and connect people whose stories are often overlooked.
In addition to their studio practice, Mary Grace is a staff art writer for DARIA Magazine, the collections manager for the University of Denver Art Collections, and a board member of Tilt West. Mary Grace holds a BA from the University of New Orleans, and two MAs—one from New York University and the other from the University of Denver.
Visitors to the Red Barn are invited to talk to Mary Grace about their artwork and experiences with chronic illness and disability.