DESIRÉE HOLMAN

Desirée Holman has birthed an immersive world exploring fantasy and narrative through her interdisciplinary practice incorporating video, drawing, sculpture and performance. Her works investigate the unknown—what is beyond the empirical and the visible, concepts explored within fantasy, counterculture, technology based groups and science fiction.

Making use of rehearsals, costumes, and props, Holman presents complex social groups, often in a state of change. She describes her work as attempting to “occupy British anthropologist Victor Turner’s notion of liminality, a transitional state of ritual wherein participants fully engaged in performance inhabit a series of new, hybrid identities.” In this space, the artist’s work reveals a complex dialogue about truth and the experience of the ‘real’ world.

Holman holds a Masters degree from the University of California at Berkeley. Earning critical acclaim for her work, Holman was awarded a San Francisco Modern Museum of Art SECA award in 2008 and in 2007 the Artadia: The Fund for Art and Dialogue award. From 2016-2017, she has returned to SFMOMA as a fellow in the Film & Performance Department with a new works commission. Solo exhibitions of her work include the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles (2009), Montreal’s SKOL (2016), Denver’s Black Cube Nomadic Museum (2015), and the Berkeley Art Museum’s MATRIX program (2011). International exhibitions of Holman’s work include the Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art, Berlin’s Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Milan’s BnD, and Toronto’s YYZ. Reviews of Holman’s work appeared in numerous publications including Artforum, Los Angeles Times, NY Arts, Artillery, San Francisco Chronicle and Artweek. She is based in Oakland, California.