Fine Art - NOMINEE: Rielle Oase

My grandmother’s crocheted hats and scarves at Christmas time were my evidence that I had a good family. These holiday traditions kept by my father’s family repeated themselves until our ritual became stale. We were cheap reproductions of Norman Rockwell’s ideal American family. I wanted to engage these symbols of warmth and comfort within the commodified landscape of superstores and packaging. The lick-able aesthetic of candy wrappers and suggestive advertising is engages Freudian pop psychology which marks the transition from wholesome family dinner to suppressed energies shared between parent and child. The performative action between family members is explored through interaction with textiles. Where one family feigns happiness and another acts cold, I explore the boundary of what is lacking in warmth.

About author:
Rielle Oase is a Taiwanese-American artist currently residing in Tucson, Arizona. She completed her Associates degree in 2012 and will be graduating Spring 2016 with her Bachelor of Fine Arts, emphasis in Photography. She has exhibited throughout Arizona and has been published in Viator magazine, Summer 2015. Oase completed her first solo exhibition, Family Ties, at Todd Walker Gallery, University of Arizona, Fall 2015. Through her performance based photographs, Oase confronts ideas that she was raised to be ashamed about. Her photographs are a contrast of the provocative at play, set in a softer tonal palette.