Carol Jazzar is pleased to present sometimes all of me is not enough, an exhibition of drawings and mixed media collages by artist Shoshanna Weinberger. This will be her first solo exhibit at the gallery.

sometimes all of me is not enough presents a body of work that is driven by the cultural history of female exposé, presentation and excessive notions of beauty.

“I find the idea of what popular culture defines as feminine beauty to be skewed and distorted.”

Shoshanna Weinberger identifies with beauty both physiologically and politically, making personal connections of awkwardness as a female growing-up in a society obsessed with attaining beauty resulting in imagery that depicts this as distorted excess. Malformed and decapitated bodies, with cornrow braids, un-kept locks and pigtails, mutations of multiple-mouths, breasts and buttocks, create a sense of familiarity, confusion, humor and tension. The drawings allude to the psychology of coexisting in human and animal form as well as forms grotesque and sexualized, confronting how women and men survey themselves and each other within their own sex.

(text source: carol jazzar contemporary art)

(Image: Shoshanna Weinberger, Under Cover Agent, Ink on paper, 17.5”H x 13”W; Courtesy of the artist)

More about Shoshanna Weinberger (b. Kingston, Jamaica West Indies)

The history of exposé, beauty and form are what drives me to create. The focus, in recent years, has been the real-life story of Saartjie Baartman, the “Hottentot Venus.” I find Baartman’s life both captivating and horrific; living as a specimen perpetuating the myth of “otherness” that can still be found today fascinates me as a woman and an artist.

Although far removed from my own experience, Baartman’s story is easily identifiable both physiologically and politically.

Contemporary connections of Baartman’s subjugation are found in references to modern-day strip-club dancers, West-Indian Dancehall performers, cultural stereotypes, Hollywood icons, prostitutes and circus side-show freaks to name a few. These figures are tangled, hogtied and suffocated with props associated with femininity such as thongs, bras, high-heels and jewelry. Some forms are placed on a scallop shell akin to the mythological Birth of Venus story. These drawings allude to the psychology of co- existing in human and animal form as well as forms grotesque and sexualized.

Education:   MFA / Yale University School of Art / New Haven, CT, 2003.   BFA / The School of the Art Institute of Chicago / Chicago, IL, 1995.

Further information here...(ArtSlant Profile) (Artist's Website)

(Image on top right: Shoshanna Weinberger, Mound of Venus , 2012, mixed media on paper, 20” x 19”; Courtesy of the artist and carol jazzar contemporary art)