Emily Bivens, Groom (still).

Emily Bivens was raised in southern Louisiana.  Her childhood bedroom was set apart from her family on the far side of an old house under which a large colony of armadillos would root and cavort all night. She studied biology later switching to art when she realized that there are limits to what science can explain. She has had exhibitions and performances in festivals, museums, galleries, and washaterias.

Bivens creates installations where inanimate becomes animate through stop-motion animation of dead animals, taxidermy, and video and sound projection embedded in and on objects. Domestic objects, such as bed frames and mirror frames from vanities, are made, found and manipulated to hold new narratives. The contexts and orientations of the recognized objects are skewed to disrupt the familiar. A video of a woman repeatedly trying to pet a stop-motion animated hawk as it nips at her mink stole is projected down onto a truncated bed that disappears into the wall. While the modified objects, taxidermy animals, ceramic sculptures, projections, and sounds in this installation carry significance on their own, a larger understanding is derived from associations between them, where each element is modified by the presence of the others.

Bivens is the recipient of the 2019 Ann and Steve Bailey Opportunity Grant and 2019 Tennessee Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship. Individual work has been shown at Skulpturens Hus, Stockholm, Sweden, Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, CO, Temple Contemporary, Philadelphia, PA and DEMO project in Springfield, IL.  Her collaborative work with The Bridge Club has been presented at Press Street for Prospect 3+, New Orleans, LA, Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara, CA, The Texas Biennial, San Antonio, TX, Currents: The Santa Fe International New Media Festival, Santa Fe, NM and the Lawndale Art Center, Houston, TX.   Bivens received her BFA from Colorado State University and her MFA from the University of Colorado in Boulder.  She is an Associate Professor of 4D and Time-Based Art at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.