the ski club

The sculptures in Empty Accessories hint at the historical baggage carried by many women in their day to day life. Hauntings of the expectations placed on women of past generations are still with us today and feel unnervingly close. Objects like silk scarves, once worn to protect an expensive hair-do, now serves to hide rust hickeys on a cardboard talcum powder container. A piece of costume jewelry, now devoid of its original context, becomes an element in a seemingly formal arrangement. Davis orchestrates her works to form a somewhat biographical narrative of the burden of our history in an era of dissonance.

Laura Davis creates feminist sculptures and drawings that excavate how sexist and misogynistic narratives become imprinted on objects. Working at the intersection of art, craft and design she exposes hierarchies of value in order to question their true purpose within material culture. Solo exhibits include The Chicago Cultural Center, threewalls, the Elmhurst Art Museum and the Chicago Artists Coalition. Notable group shows include the Luminary St. Louis, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Soap Factory and the Hyde Park Art Center. Her work has been written about in Art in America, the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Art 21 Blog, Art Slant and Newcity. Davis received her MFA from the University of Chicago in 2004, her BFA from The Cleveland Institute of Art in 1996 and currently teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.