Mary Reid Kelley

Mary Reid Kelley (born 1979 in Greenville, South Carolina, USA) creates performances, drawings, and sculptures in collaboration with her partner Patrick Kelley which she interweaves in her films to form total works of art which are rich in innuendo and punning wordplay. She narrates the realities of women’s lives during historical periods of political, social, economic and cultural upheaval such as the French Revolution and the First World  War, examining cultural gender roles and the struggle by women for liberation.

In Reid Kelley’s first solo exhibition in an European museum, the Kunsthalle Bremen presents her four-part film cycle on the First World War. The black-and-white films, based on extensive research, oscillate between drawings that are brought to life and stop-motion animation.
The artist combines her concise aesthetic, which ironically synthesizes art-historical styles such as Cubism, Expressionism and Surrealism, with sophisticated wordplay in rhyming verse. By emphasizing inflated artificiality in both the language and the visual images, Reid Kelley explores the radical effect that dramatic historical events have had on changes in identity, gender roles, behaviour, sexuality and speech. Reid Kelley’s films are supplemented by the artist’s drawings and research material.

Alongside the exhibition, visitors can view a selection of works on paper entitled “And then a Plank in Reason, Broke” dealing with the First World War by artists such as Käthe Kollwitz, Ernst Barlach, and Otto Dix (until 15 January 2017). The works, which are part of the Collection of the Kunsthalle and are displayed in the Old and New Cabinets, were chosen by Reid Kelley and enter into an artistic discourse with her own works.