The Art Career
Emily McElwreath
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Alannah Farrell: Portraiture, Psyche, and the Trans Experience in a Shifting World
The Art Career is honored to share a conversation with Alannah Farrell, recorded on November 8th, 2024, in their Chinatown apartment. Releasing this episode during Trans Awareness Week feels especially meaningful, but the importance of celebrating and uplifting trans voices extends to every day. Alannah’s perspective is a powerful reminder of the beauty, resilience, and talent within the community. Thank you, Alannah, for sharing so much with us. Farrell is a queer, trans non-binary painter who lives and works in Chinatown on the LES, New York City. Conversations around portraiture often focus on identity, gaze, style, and expression. Their paintings touch on these but further delve into how the human psyche is affected by relationships, selfhood, place, architectural spaces, gender dysphoria, existing in a changing body, and memory. They grapple with a complex tenderness, light piercing through a brooding sadness. Farrell presents queer individuals through a lens of understanding and connection, a context shielded from a society eager to erase or enact violence. Their paintings depict more than a moment; rather, time itself unfurling before our eyes—shifting light, shifting weight, the emergence of the inner world. Furthermore, Farrell paints thoughtfully and attentively from life. They describe inviting sitters into the studio as an adrenaline rush—having to work with time as a restriction and the challenge of attempting to capture what is full of life and motion into a singular image. — BL Alannah Farrell (b. 1988, Kingston, NY) is a queer painter who lives and works in New York, NY. Farrell completed their BFA at The Cooper Union, New York, NY. They have presented their work in solo and group exhibitions at Anat Egbi, Los Angeles, CA and New York, NY; Green Family Art Foundation, Dallas, TX; Lyles and King, New York, NY; Alexander Gray Associates, New York, NY; Harper’s, New York, NY; Richard Heller Gallery, Santa Monica, CA; The Painting Center, New York, NY; Theirry Goldberg Gallery, New York, NY; and UTA Artist Space, Los Angeles, CA. Their work is in the permanent collection of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, FL. They are represented by Anat Egbi, Los Angeles. http://alannahfarrell.com https://www.alexandergray.com/exhibitions/821-alannah-farrell-erect/ https://www.instagram.com/alannah.farrell.studio/
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