AIR Artist Eve Essex Opening Reception

Eve Essex is a Providence-based artist whose work suggests that history is as malleable as fiction.  She attempts to neutralize the authority of ‘proper’ history by suggesting a multiplicity of alternatives. In video, sculpture, photography and performance, she explores historical moments and figures as a site for active re-interpretation. Originally from Columbus, Ohio, she received a BFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design.

"How to Improve the World,” the focus of Essex's AIR residency, is a project that blurs the roles of artist and anthropologist.

Essex's object of study will be the Marxist composer Cornelius Cardew and his avant-garde musical milieu of the 60s and 70s.  She wishes to adopt the political battles waged in Cardew’s social and musical life as the subject for a historical archive and library. 

Through video, interviews, writing, and collaborative performances in the guise of “historical reenactments” Essex will collect and fabricate a range of historical recordings and documents—a body of generated materials that make up the collection of this library.  This factual, albeit highly subjective history will serve a theatrical framework for investigations of the artist’s role as public intellectual, and the mythical status of canonical modern artists.