Mary Laube, Faded Blossoms Fresh When Worn, acrylic on panel, 30" X 30". 2024.

Mary Laube is an Associate Professor of painting and drawing at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She received her MFA from The University of Iowa and her BFA from Illinois State University. Laube has held recent solo exhibitions at Morgan Lehman Gallery (NYC), Ortega y Gasset Projects (NYC), and Tristar Arts (Knoxville). Group exhibitions include Laney Contemporary (Savannah), The Warbling Collective (London), Culture House D.C., Virginia Commonwealth University (Qatar), the Spring Break Art Show (NYC), Monaco (St. Louis), Tiger Strikes Asteroid (NYC), Field Projects (NYC), Atlanta Contemporary (with Good Weather Gallery), and the Knoxville Museum of Art. Laube has been awarded numerous artist residencies including Yaddo, the Wassaic Project, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Stiwdeo Maelor (Wales), and was awarded grants from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the AHL Foundation. Laube’s work has been published in Art Maze Mag, Maake Magazine, and New American Paintings. Her work has been reviewed in White Hot Magazine and New Art Examiner among others.

Laube’s work questions how objects accumulate meaning across time and space as they are placed in various contexts. Fragments of folk paintings, textiles, ornaments, and other objects are echoed in the work as synthesized forms that appear flattened, off-kilter, and unnamable. Through the abstraction of historical objects her work gives form to the de-territorialized conditions of a globalized and colonized world. In doing so, they become artifacts themselves, antagonizing our relationship to culture, and the fraught process of defining it.