about.
Clara Jeanne Reed (b. 1999) is an artist, historian, and performer from a small town in Idaho who is based in NYC. Most of her work revolves around self-portraiture, where she uses photography to abstract and fragment her own body. As a trained art historian as well as a practicing artist, she often adopts a research oriented and transhistorical approach to investigate how our personal narratives are deeply ingrained in cultural and material history. She positions her own body as a field of inquiry in an effort to gain subjectivity, a privilege that has often been denied towards women and queer people like herself. By intentionally fragmenting her own image, she attempts to analogize the acrimonious pieces of the body in an act of recovery.
She has a masters in the History of Art and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts and a BFA in Photography and Imaging from NYU Tisch. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Photography at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. She has exhibited with NCWCA, Arc Gallery San Francisco, and the Living Gallery, among others. Her first monograph was published by Snap Collective in April 2024, and her writing has been published by CMSMC and the International Human Rights Festival. She has participated in residencies globally and spoken at multiple universities including Rutgers, UNC, SUNY, and Universidad de los Andes.
As a queer woman artist, she is dedicated to investigating ways that art education can be reformed to be more interrogative, intersectional, and inclusive.
For inquiries and pricing contact by email using the form below, or DM on instagram.
CV
Education:
Master of Arts from The Institute of Fine Arts at New York University
Bachelor of Fine Arts from NYU Tisch Photography and Imaging / Bachelor of Arts from NYU College of Arts and Sciences (minor in Hellenic Studies)
Residency:
Mudhouse Residency, Agios Ioannis, Crete Summer 2024
School of Visual Arts Residency Program, Contours of Identity, Fall 2023
Exhibitions:
"Me and My Selves," "Crisis in Permanence," in Dreams & Nightmares, October 11-17, 2024 at Boomer Gallery, London UK.
“Prothesis I (In Mourning and In Rage)”, “Prothesis II,” “Prothesis III,” photo mixed/media, in ACCESS: An Ordinary Notion, curated by Karen M. Gutfreund, at Arc Gallery with the Northern California Women’s Caucus for Art, June 15, 2024-July 7, 2024, San Francisco, CA. https://www.ncwca.org/access.html
"Unmarked," digital photographs and cyanotypes, with Mudhouse Residency in Agios Ioannis, June 2024.
Contours of Identity, Fragments curated by Hayley Ferber with The School of Visual Arts Artist Residency Project Fall 2023, December 19, 2023-January 30, 2024 https://sva.edu/events/fragments
Me and My Selves, Eclecticism curated by Jonathan Goodman and Kuzma Vostrikov with Orangé Art Foundation, November 30, 2023-January 30, 2024 https://orangeart.org/eclecticism/
Me and My Selves, On the Cyclical Nature of Things, Andromeda, Rear Window at State of Wonder NYC with Galerie Anty Warhol May 2023
Crisis in Permanence,Tapestries of Memory curated by Daniel Kuzinez, at Ornithology Jazz Club January 2023
Terrains of My Body: In Various States of Anonymity, Perspectives at East Village Art Collection October 2022
Inquiry of the Body Part II 2021, Prothesis 2022, In the Meadows of Asphodel, Liminal Frames: Body Agency at Carrie Able Gallery April 2022
Metamorphoses, Rebond with Tanthem Live Art Collective 2021
Metamorphoses, NYU Tisch Department of Photography and Imaging Senior Thesis Show 2021 at 721 Broadway, NewYork, NY 10003
Publication:
Reed, Clara Jeanne. SOMA/PSYCHE. Snap Collective Publishing. Copenhagen, Denmark. June 2024.
Reed, Clara Jeanne. "Three Buffaloes." Queer Voices of the World. International Human Rights Arts Festival, December 2023.
Reed, Clara Jeanne. “Amazon Warriors in Classical Greek Art: Exploring PatriarchalFoundations in Ancient Greece.” The Coalition of Master’s Scholars on Material Culture,June 3, 2022.
Reed, Clara Jeanne. “Metamorphoses.” ISO Magazine Issue 19: SOLACE, NYU Tisch School of the Arts, May 2021.
Conferences and Talks:
"Beyond the Between: Queer Fantasies and Gendered Realities in Berni Searle and Zanele Muholi's Self-Portraits," 9th Annual Symposium of ASGO, The Ways We Attach Ourselves: Affect, Agency, and Emotion in the Visual Arts, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ackland Art Museum, Chapel Hill, NC, September 2023.
"The Disappearing Act: Traces of Identity in the Photographs of Ana Mendieta and Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons," XI International Symposium, "Other Histories of Photography," Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, September 2023.
“For the Most Beautiful: Assembling a Performance of Beauty in the Work of Judith Golden,” NYU Academic Threesis Challenge April 2023, New York University, New York, NY, April 2023.
“Carving Space: Adrian Piper’s Mythic Being,” 45th Susman Graduate Conference, “Small but Mighty: Celebrating Big Histories of Marginalized Individuals, Spaces, and Communities,” Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey, April 2023.
“A Crisis in Permanence: Reflections of the Body as a Way to Remember,” Artist Panel at Ornithology Jazz Club, “Tapestries of Memory,” Brooklyn, New York, January 2023.
Awards:
Barbara and Ben Aliza Award 2021
New York University Founders Day Award 2021
Shelby White and Leon Levy Travel Grant Recipient 2022
Antonina S. Ranieri International Scholars Fund 2022 Recipient
Thomas Drysdale Fund Grant Recipient 2019
High Honors in NYU Dept. Art History’s Honors Thesis Program 2020-21