State Of The Art: Danielle Dean

Multi-disciplinary artist Danielle Dean on her latest project, “Amazon”

How would you describe your art?

My practice is about culture, media, advertising and film—how those material histories have an influence on the ways we behave and how we talk to each other. I’m interested in the idea that there’s nothing pure about our way of being, and that it comes from a history of stuff that we generate, that we consume, and that we repeat.

You work across many different mediums—painting, installation, performance, video—do you have a personal favourite? My favorite is video, because when it when it works, it’s so exciting. And it feels like it makes the most sense for some of the ways that I work, because I often work with real people. For “Amazon”, I worked with workers who use the crowd-sourcing platform, Amazon Mechanical Turk. Working with video meant that I could connect with them and find ways to collaborate with them in the project. The video becomes a thing that we’re collaborating together to make, and something that we can all use, or share and be proud of afterwards. But video is also super expensive, and it takes a long time, and it’s exhausting. So after making a

video, sometimes, I think, Oh, let me just go back to the studio and paint.

Your work questions how we’re shaped by commercial narratives. When did your interest in that begin?

I think that it was sparked when I was living in London after my fine art degree, when I spent a couple of years working in an advertising firm. That was so revealing to me, because we watch adverts on TV and take it for granted—you don’t necessarily understand how they are put together, or for what reason. When I did my MFA at Calarts, I started looking at the history of advertising, archives going back to the first print ad in a black and white newspaper.

Do you recall any adverts that made a particular impression on you? I used to love the Cadbury ads. Nowadays you can get away with not seeing ads the way that you used to, because we all stream television. You’re still bombarded by it, but not in the same way—it’s getting harder and harder to disentangle ourselves. If I have one look at an advert, Instagram seems to know that and then millions of that same ad for say, face cream, bombard you. It’s a bit more psychologically damaging than it would be just watching television ads. It feels way more targeted and personal. ■

“ART NOW: Danielle Dean” is on show at the Tate Britain until May 28