Polyphony “Polyphony”, staged in an abandoned theatre, traces the path of a performer endlessly traversing on and off the stage. Her “act” consists solely of an encore, and her song is in fact a rising high-pitched scream. A call to arms, as the flowers thrown in admiration seem to rise up in [...]
Shana Moulton creates evocatively oblique narratives in her video and performance works. Combining an unsettling, wry humor with a low-tech, Pop sensibility, Moulton plays a character whose interactions with the everyday world are both mundane and surreal, in a domestic sphere just slightly askew. As her protagonist navigates the enigmatic and possibly magical properties of [...]
My performances, videos and sculptures create a world populated by a masked and costumed cast that re-interprets my own image in the form of popular cultural icons. My characters struggle with each other and the audience through activities that combine violence and overt sexuality with slapstick physical humor. I embody an ever-changing cast that includes [...]
These photographs document a private ritual in which I adorn my body with line drawings and then display my adorned body to the camera as a re-enactment of the identity formation process.
This ritual mimics the daily grooming and attention to appearance that is tightly woven into a woman’s self image. At the same time, [...]
My work is about the ways people communicate.
My work is about the obsession with affirming one’s own existence.
My work is about me.
I want to take great personal risks in the pursuit of personal transformation.
I want my work to be the evidence of this transformation.
I want my work to be generous.
I want my work to bring [...]
These images represent two separate but related performances. The photograph on the left represents my practice of merging body and landscape in the woods of Rabun County, Georgia. My intention in this practice is to blur the boundaries between nature and self in order to explore the quiet unfolding relationship between the body, earth and [...]
Please Click Here to Watch Select Excerpts from “The Amber Doll Project” (1min)
In 2007, I commissioned the production of a life-like sex doll, a RealDoll, made of a posable PVC skeleton and silicone flesh, in my exact likeness. My doll, Amber Doll, began as a Styrofoam print-out of a digital scan of my head. Her [...]
Please Click Here to Watch Select Excerpts from “The Feminism? Project” (1min)
Starting with sorority sisters and ending with her own mother, Amber Hawk Swanson scripts her ten videos from “The Feminism? Project” from edited interviews with a variety of women. Their original responses to the topic of feminism range from naïve surprise to composed discourse, [...]
Axis Mundi Remote Performance Video Clip
Axis Mundi is my remote performance that took place in January at Jokursalon, a glacier lagoon near Vatnajökull glacier in southeast Iceland. My only audience for the piece (besides the cameraperson) was several swimming seals, as I am interested in performances in remote locations with no audience except for the [...]