Mary Laube (born Seoul, Korea, 1985) is an Associate Professor at University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She received her MFA (2012) from The University of Iowa, and her BFA (2009) from Illinois State University. Past exhibitions include the Knoxville Museum of Art, Ortega y Gasset Projects (NYC), VCU Qatar (Doha), Monaco (St Louis), The Spring Break Art Show (NYC), and Coop Gallery (Nashville). Artist residencies include Yaddo, Wassaic Project, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, and Stiwdeo Maelor in Corris, Wales. Past publications include Art Maze Mag, Maake Magazine, and New American Paintings. In 2019, Mary received the Contemporary Visual Art Bronze Award from AHL Foundation. She is a co-founder of the Warp Whistle Project, a collaborative duo with composer Paul Schuette. Together, they make work that merges kinetic stage sets with music performance.
Artist Statement:
Mary Laube’s work represents the instability of identity and culture within the context of transnational narratives. How can art disrupt reductive and colonial perspectives of culture? How can abstraction propose new worlds and futures? Her paintings engage these questions through the representation and abstraction of museum artifacts from her birthplace. Objects such as Korean wrapping cloths, ink stones, Buddhist statues, and folk paintings surface in the work as synthesized forms that appear flattened, off-kilter, and often unnamable. She uses abstraction as a device for re-shaping seemingly embalmed fragments of history into mutable ideas. Through re-imagining historical objects, her paintings become artifacts of displacement, reunion, decolonization, memorial, and myth.