Artist Statement | Bio
Clover Morell is an artist & curator who creates interdisciplinary performances and media works. Each piece is created in response to the structures and limitations of the site and/or theme of exhibition. Often collaborative and experimental by nature, Clover's work examines the human spirit, interpersonal politics, perception, memory and discomfort.
Morell has exhibited her work throughout Chicago at The Chicago Cultural Center, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, Betty Rymer Gallery, Link’s Hall, Elastic Arts and MOTO Restaurant. Her work in collaboration with Julie Laffin toured to The Prague Quadrennial in 2007 and The Dutch Theatre Festival in Amsterdam in 2009.
Originally a visual artist from New York, Morell received an MFA in Performance from The School of The Art Institute of Chicago in 2008 and an MA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Columbia College Chicago in 2005. She has studied media, writing, movement and performance-making with artists Lin Hixson, Goat Island, Sadie Benning, Lida Abdul, Jenny Magnus and Diego Pinon among others. She currently lives and works in Chicago.
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Performance, to me, is in all ways a metaphor for existence. It is the poetry of life - our fears and desires in action and event. As such, I use performance to understand myself in context to the world around me, examining interpersonal politics, the construction of female identity and power, and new ways of being in collaboration.
Like the process of mapping, most of my work begins with a point of origin: Theme / Location / Audience / Time
I conduct historical and contemporary research and assemble fragments (video, audio, text, objects, theoretical concepts) that refer to this site of origin. Once in the studio, I explode and unravel the pieces, generating movements, gestures and sounds that work together to reflect the certain harmony and discord of human experience. I focus heavily on those qualities of life that are difficult: apathy, resistance, control, repression, loss.
Linguistic devices such a symbolism, metaphor and irony allow me to access to ways of speaking about difficult emotional experiences. Likewise, I find the use of beauty and romance a powerful tactic in engaging my audience in ethical questions around personal responsibility and human behavior. It is within this contract between performers and observers that the delicate and potent interpersonal space between humans can be most directly addressed.
The performance compositions that emerge are influenced by painting, poetry and film and exhibit my theoretical interests in gender studies, psychology, somatics and metaphysics. The resulting ephemera – drawings, texts, photographs, and videos are part of a larger evolving visual meta narrative in which I am always becoming through performance.
