Laura Napier

“Laura Napier took the Greyhound bus to New York City to attend art school and never looked back. She recently completed her M.F.A. at Bard College. Take Me There, a field guide to places in New York City to see crowd formations, can be downloaded from her website anytime. She discovered while working on this review that she enjoys writing. She is thirty-two and lives with her true love, a calico cat named Ampersand, in the Bronx.”

Crosswalk

By Laura Napier | Published: September 21, 2009
Laura Napier. crosswalk, 2006, 16mm color film, 8 min. Courtesy of the artist.
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Icarus Redeemed: Rebecca Horn

By Laura Napier | Published: January 3, 2008

Rebecca Horn. Still from performance of <em>Körperfächer</em>, 1972, from <em>Performances II</em>, 1970-73. Courtesy of the artist and Sean Kelly Gallery, New York.

Performances II (1970-1973)

Rebecca Horn

Video documentation of various performances

"WACK! Art and The Feminist Revolution" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), and The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C., 2007

"White Body Fan" (1972)

She stands facing us, arms reaching above her head, a translucent sky behind her. Three horizontal straps cross her torso. Giant white wings of fabric tremble with her effort to hold them up as she slowly moves them. It is like being above a massive, white, resting butterfly; she closes the wings towards us, hiding herself, and reopens. As she tips the fan from side to side, we see her figure/the white sky/the wing-like body fan.

In a wider view she is full figure, standing on sand, unfurling the body fan from a resting position to form a perfect circle around her inset body, further held in place by four straps on each leg. Straps segment the looser fabric of her blue shirt and jeans, making her body caterpillar-like from the side.

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