Tammy Rae Carland

TAMMY RAE CARLAND

Born 1965, Portland, Maine
Lives and works in Oakland, CA

Tammy Rae Carland’s work can be seen as a critique of mainstream comedy, its systems and authors, through a conceptual and lens-based artistic process. Carland’s recent photographs from the Live From Somewhere series explore notions of being “stood up” or the “stand-up” via the anthropomorphization of staged, documented objects. Carland not necessarily conflates, but rather sympathizes between the theatrical and the photographic, the pressures of performance, and the “enchantments of the live” as critiqued through the absence of the body, in particular the performing body. Carland’s single-channel video, Live From Somewhere (2013) presents the consciously awkward moment from Gilda Radner’s 1979 one-woman Broadway show titled Gilda Radner – Live From New York when a spotlight pans the theatre curtains, anticipating Radner’s stage appearance. This searching action is looped, in continuum, and becomes a stand-in for Radner, simultaneously symbolizing a performer’s reluctance and an audience’s expectations. Carland is interested in the history of female comics and through it provides a larger comment on gender roles including the fragmentation, abjection, and marginalization of the body and the legacy of feminism.

Tammy Rae Carland’s work has been exhibited and screened internationally. Group shows include ‘Laugh In’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego,the ‘12th Istanbul Biennale’ in Turkey, ‘Seeing Gertrude Stein’ at the Contemporary Jewish Museum and the ‘Bay Area Now 6’ exhibition at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Recent shows include a solo exhibition at Jessica Silverman Gallery in San Francisco and the ‘Alien She’ exhibition, which is traveling through 2016. Her photographs and writing have been published in numerous publications and books including The Passionate Camera; Queer Bodies of Desire, Lesbian Art in America, A Girl’s Guide to Taking Over The World and recently the anthology Art & Queer Culture. Duke Press features her work in the book Feeling Photography published in 2014 and she is featured in the recent book 33 Artists and 3 acts by Sarah Thornton. She has collaborated on the record art of some seminal underground music releases for the bands Bikini Kill, The Fakes and The Butchies and in the 1990’s Carland produced a series of influential fanzines, including I (heart) Amy Carter. From 1997-2004 she co-ran Mr. Lady Records and Videos, an independent record label and video art distribution company dedicated to feminist and queer culture. She is a Professor at the California College of the Arts where she also is the Dean of the Fine Arts Division. She lives in Oakland and is represented by Jessica Silverman Gallery in San Francisco.