Portfolio
Bio
Allison Baker earned her MFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design, a BFA in Sculpture and BA in Gender Studies from Indiana University.
Her work investigates hegemonic femininity as a site of transgression and resistance with tongue planted firmly in cheek where she deploys irony and the abject in order to make space to ponder the soul crushing banalities of what many might term “women’s work.” It’s funny (hopefully) but funny with a serrated edge.
Allison clawed her way into higher education with a thesaurus and words she cannot pronounce; currently, she is an Associate Professor of Sculpture and Studio Art at Hamline University where she tries to impart some knowledge of finesse, persuasion, and manual labor.
Allison has exhibited nationally and internationally including at the CICA Museum in South Korea, Zverev Centre of Contemporary Art in Moscow, the Knockdown Center in New York, and Franconia Sculpture Park where her work is currently exhibited. Allison is passionate about inclusion and equity in sculpture and has presented on “Pedagogies on Inclusion” at the ICCCIA and NCCIAP.
Statement
My creative research is firmly rooted in feminist scholarship; my goal is to actualize abstract theoretical concepts as tangible objects and experiences mediated and documented through sound and video to push the boundaries of both academic research and public education in our precious post-digital moment. Utilizing sculpture, video, new media, and medical narrative of “environmental illness” to examine the competing scientific paradigms that currently, but contradictorily, define and govern the “health” and “normalcy” of our post-digital bodies and homes. Sculptural feminist praxis (specifically, the abject) reveals what our previously considered “safe” and “sterile” domestic spaces, objects, and bodies really are: Semi-monstrous organic communities, of which “we” are only one tiny, post-human part. A thematic subtext of my work revolves around cleaning, caregiving, and labor. I’ve been unintentionally making work about class and gendered poverty from a position of lived experience. Not with a laser focused clarity or awareness of my intentions and material choices but from within what Bourdieu would call a subordinated position as “the working-class ‘aesthetic’ is a dominated aesthetic,” because I’m trailer trash that likes shiny things and trashy things and nacho cheese.