Heather Rasmussen was born in Santa Ana, CA in 1982 and lives in Los Angeles. As a dancer, woman, and mother, Rasmussen’s work asks the question “How does this body move and rest within spaces among accumulated objects?” Her work can be thought of as still-lifes, but they are also documents of deterioration, movement and experimentation using her body alongside other objects. Rasmussen recently completed a residency at the Dora Maar Estate. These works were created during her residency.
Dora Maar and other female surrealists have been enormously influential to my artwork. Maar’s provocative photomontages speak to the complexity of the subconscious desires hidden within the body that I employ in my own pieces. While in residence I inserted myself into the history of Dora Maar and her surrounding landscape because it was such an important portal for her and her community to access new ways of seeing and interacting with the world. I incorporated obejcts from the Dora Maar house such as furniture, sculpture, vegetables, flora and my own body into tableaus. The light through the windows of the house appeared and moved across the studio every day and inspired me to interact with the changing shapes and scenes.
My background in ballet compels me to use my own body in carefully composed photographs, installations and videos that draw on art historical and autobiographical references. The objects in my artworks, including vegetables, fruit, chairs, mirrors, placentas, my breasts and more, become a cast of characters with which I mine sexuality, the grotesque and subconscious longing. My photographs reveal a body that is constantly changing, enjoying physical pleasure, and enduring the pains of motherhood and aging. My work pushes back against the history of photography in which male photographers used female subjects as muses, objects and form. Instead, I find power in using my body and the tools I have around me, to capture moments of my own authentic experience filled with hilarity, pathos, and beauty.
Rasmussen received a Master of Fine Arts from the California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, CA in 2007 and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of California, Irvine, CA in 2004. Notable awards include an Emergency Grant from the Foundation of Contemporary Art in 2014 and the Dean’s Reserve Fund award for the School of Art at CalArts in 2007. Press includes reviews in 2017 in the Los Angeles Times and Hyperallergic.com and ArtSlant, as well as The New Yorker in 2015. Rasmussen’s work can be found in the permanent collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA.
AVAILABLE WORKS
