Tameka Norris

In residence
December 09 - January 11, 2017

Tameka Norris was born in Guam and received her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Los Angeles before graduating with an MFA from Yale University School of Art in 2012. Whilst at UCLA, Norris transposed the language and aesthetic of hip-hop onto the backdrop of her college campus. In the video Licker (2010), Tameka Norris, in a bikini and fur coat raps, ‘I’m that black Cindy Sherman and that little Kara Walker, Basquiat resurrected from the dead…’.

Tameka Norris’s multidisciplinary practice explores issues of race, poverty and social politics, drawing on her own experiences and relationships as an underlying narrative. Through painting, performance, music and film, explore her identity as an artist and multiracial woman working in the deep American South. Utilizing concepts of sampling, mixing and appropriation, Norris contextualizes her various materials throughout her practice, by reusing familiar and discarded objects from her past. She is currently the Grant Wood Visiting Assistant Professor Fellow at the University of Iowa.

Norris has participated in numerous important exhibitions including: Southern Accent: Seeking the American South in Contemporary Art, Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University, Durham, NC (2016); Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art, Yerba Buena Museum, San Francisco, CA (2015); Almost Acquaintances, Ronchini Gallery, London (solo exhibition) (2014); Prospect.3 Biennial, New Orleans, LA (2014); The Walker Museum, Minneapolis, MN; and Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX (2013 - 2015); Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art, The Studio Museum, Harlem, NY; Radical Presence, Contemporary Art Museum, Houston, TX (2012); Gifted and Talented, Third Streaming Gallery, New York, NY (2012); Prospect.2 Biennial, New Orleans , LA (2011); Queer Sexing, Human Resources, Los Angeles, CA (2011); Prospect.1.5 Biennial, Good Children Gallery, New Orleans, LA (2010); Open Projector Night, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2009); True Diva Biennale, Skowhegan, ME (2009); and Dissent! 1968 to Now, Laband Gallery, Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA (2008). Norris has also participated in residencies including: the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME (2009); the Fountainhead Residency, Miami, FL (2013); the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Englewood, FL (2013); and The MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH (2016).

Artist's Website: http://www.mekajean.com/
Gallery Representation - London, England: http://www.ronchinigallery.com/artists/tameka-jenean-norris/
Gallery Representation - New York, NY: http://www.janelombardgallery.com/tameka-norris/
Gallery Representation - San Francisco, CA: http://renabranstengallery.com/artists/works/tameka-norris