The Wall Street Journal profiles Genesis Belanger, who earned her Master of Fine Arts in Combined Media from Hunter College in 2012 and has since gained renown for her sculptures. Creating uncanny tableaux that make playful use of everyday objects to tackle big themes of power and politics, Belanger is scheduled to have her first solo exhibition this summer, at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut.
The exhibit, which focuses on loss and the gestures of sympathy, has “turned out to be an oddly timely topic,” she says. Her second solo show, scheduled for later this summer in Dijon, France, will explore feminine clichés and female objectification. Belanger, who eschews glazes in favor of pigments, models each of her clay pieces by hand and is interested in bringing the psychological into the material. According to the executive director of the Aldrich, her work “remains incredibly expressive and colorful, but she’s making it in this way that is totally invented.”
