Bridget Moser
BEMIS CENTER
UB ART GALLERIES
Combining a performance for video, fugitive objects, a para-site installation (sight, site, and set) and a live performance, When I Am Through With You There Won’t Be Anything Left expands the space-time of the exhibition, hospitably enfolding several elsewheres, both past and future.
Held up by an elegant tripod, a vertical screen presents the tightly framed performance of a white woman (the artist) sharing a dizzying monologue with visitors she meets eye to eye. An array of class-aspirational objects and furnishings surround this video delegate, bringing her world into the gallery, against a painted outline of classically receding space. While her on and offscreen universe is carefully color-coordinated to reward her generic whiteness and heterofemininity, her speech quickly falls apart when she tries to dig deeper, to understand her body and herself. Since language only leads her to a shuffle of clichés blending self-care, abundance, and worthiness, she escalates her inquiry into self-identity and flesh, awkwardly revealing the toxic untenability of whiteness and finally acting on the dire need for its abolition. As she tears at her (hilarious prop) organs, we are left with a grinning, fuzzy “rose gold” skeleton… who reunites with her in the live performance.
BIOGRAPHY
Bridget Moser is a performance and video artist whose work is positioned between prop comedy, performance art, experimental theater, existential anxiety, and intuitive dance. Recent solo exhibitions include It’s too expensive to be alive at Texas State Galleries, San Marcos, TX (2022), My Crops Are Dying But My Body Persists at Remai Modern, Saskatoon, Canada (2020) and You Opened That Can Now Let’s Eat the Whole Thing at SPACES Cleveland (2019). She has presented work in venues across Canada, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Mercer Union, Toronto; Vancouver Art Gallery; and The Western Front, Vancouver. She has been shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award, Canada's preeminent contemporary art prize.
PROGRAMS
PRESS
Jayne Wilkinson, “I don’t know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality,” C Magazine 154, Spring 2023, 78-79.
Gregory Volk, “What is Hospitality in an Era of Crisis?” Hyperallergic, February 16, 2023.
Alberto Rey, “Investigating Global Issued Related to the Body: UB galleries host international exhibition,” Buffalo Spree, December 14, 2022.
Sean J Patrick Carney, “When Angels Deserve to Die: An Interview with Bridget Moser,” Glasstire.com, December 11, 2022.
Christina Nafziger, “Review: I don’t know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality,” SixtyInchesFromCenter.org, June 30, 2022.
Travis Diehl, “’The Bodywork of Hospitality' Sees Communal Care as a Civic Obligation,” Frieze, February 28, 2022.
Bridget Moser
BEMIS CENTER
UB ART GALLERIES
Combining a performance for video, fugitive objects, a para-site installation (sight, site, and set) and a live performance, When I Am Through With You There Won’t Be Anything Left expands the space-time of the exhibition, hospitably enfolding several elsewheres, both past and future.
Held up by an elegant tripod, a vertical screen presents the tightly framed performance of a white woman (the artist) sharing a dizzying monologue with visitors she meets eye to eye. An array of class-aspirational objects and furnishings surround this video delegate, bringing her world into the gallery, against a painted outline of classically receding space. While her on and offscreen universe is carefully color-coordinated to reward her generic whiteness and heterofemininity, her speech quickly falls apart when she tries to dig deeper, to understand her body and herself. Since language only leads her to a shuffle of clichés blending self-care, abundance, and worthiness, she escalates her inquiry into self-identity and flesh, awkwardly revealing the toxic untenability of whiteness and finally acting on the dire need for its abolition. As she tears at her (hilarious prop) organs, we are left with a grinning, fuzzy “rose gold” skeleton… who reunites with her in the live performance.
BIOGRAPHY
Bridget Moser is a performance and video artist whose work is positioned between prop comedy, performance art, experimental theater, existential anxiety, and intuitive dance. Recent solo exhibitions include It’s too expensive to be alive at Texas State Galleries, San Marcos, TX (2022), My Crops Are Dying But My Body Persists at Remai Modern, Saskatoon, Canada (2020) and You Opened That Can Now Let’s Eat the Whole Thing at SPACES Cleveland (2019). She has presented work in venues across Canada, including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; Mercer Union, Toronto; Vancouver Art Gallery; and The Western Front, Vancouver. She has been shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award, Canada's preeminent contemporary art prize.
PROGRAMS
PRESS
Jayne Wilkinson, “I don’t know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality,” C Magazine 154, Spring 2023, 78-79.
Gregory Volk, “What is Hospitality in an Era of Crisis?” Hyperallergic, February 16, 2023.
Alberto Rey, “Investigating Global Issued Related to the Body: UB galleries host international exhibition,” Buffalo Spree, December 14, 2022.
Sean J Patrick Carney, “When Angels Deserve to Die: An Interview with Bridget Moser,” Glasstire.com, December 11, 2022.
Christina Nafziger, “Review: I don’t know you like that: The Bodywork of Hospitality,” SixtyInchesFromCenter.org, June 30, 2022.
Travis Diehl, “’The Bodywork of Hospitality' Sees Communal Care as a Civic Obligation,” Frieze, February 28, 2022.