×

Apply

Apply

© Isabel Yellin

« Back to Winners

Isabel Yellin

Los Angeles

Artist Statement

My practice utilizes anthropomorphic sculpture to evoke the subconscious. I am primarily concerned with issues of desire, projection, and fulfillment. By using a material that is that background to our ever-digitizing world, the sofa we sit on as we scroll, I am able to have something totally alien and uncomfortable feel familiar and tempting. Psychology has always interested me because my mother suffered from schizophrenia before committing suicide in 2008. Since then, I have researched notions of the other and the fantastical, I have read a lot of science fiction, most notably Octavia Butler, and theory such as Jacques Lacan: The Feminist Introduction. We all fantasize everyday, and my installations try to conjure up those dream worlds. Places and objects that feel simultaneously comforting and disturbing are really just mirrors for how we are always having to reconcile with ourselves. How do we feel when we look in the mirror, when we revisit something we did, when we feel the gaze of someone else on us? Especially as a woman, these moments are formative and the subconscious is the pool in which they fester. For years I feel I have suffered from body dysmorphia, truly I do not really know what I look like, and my practice is an extension of that - trying to figure out my sense of self, the trauma of the loss of my mother, and the desires and fantasies I experience as a result. I use the body as a metaphor for the mind.

© Isabel Yellin

Isabel Yellin's Portfolio

Isabel Yellin, Install View,
Isabel Yellin, Sheila, Leatherette, Rubber, Dress Form Stand, 2017, 60 x 19 x 19 in
Isabel Yellin, Install View,
Isabel Yellin, Braided Comfort, Velvet, Stuffing, 2019, Dimensions Variable
Isabel Yellin, Surrogate, Velvet, Stuffing, Leather Scrunchies, 2018, 4 x 6 ft.
Isabel Yellin, Single Bed, Velvet and Stuffing, 2019, 3 x 7 ft.
Isabel Yellin, Scrunchies, leatherette, elastic, Shag Rug, 2018, Dimensions Variable.
Isabel Yellin, Install View,
Isabel Yellin, Detail, Cuddle Puddle, Velvet, Stuffing, 2018
Isabel Yellin, Surrogate, Velvet, Stuffing, Scrunchies, 2018, 2.5 x 4 ft.

© Isabel Yellin

Artist Biography

B. 1987 in New York, Yellin received her B.A. from Oberlin College in 2011, and her M.A. from the Royal College of Art, London in 2014. Recent exhibitions include, "Show Me As I Want To Be Seen" at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, "Cuddle Puddle", Althuis Hofland Fine Arts, Amsterdam, and "Velvet Concrete" at M. Le Blanc Gallery, Chicago. She has been reviewed in Art Forum, The New Yorker, The Art Newspaper, and was a 2018 recipient of the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant.

isabelyellin.com

@isayell

© Isabel Yellin

Stay Connected

Follow Us on Instagram
@hopperprize

Join Our Network