Colleen Plumb
Colleen Plumb (American, born Chicago, IL) makes photographs, videos, and public video projections investigating contradictory relationships people have with animals. Her recent projects explore the way animals in captivity function as symbols of persistent colonial thinking, that a striving for human domination over nature has been normalized, and that consumption masks as curiosity. Plumb's work sheds light on abnormal behaviors of captive animals in order to bring attention to implicit values of society as a whole, particularly those that perpetuate power imbalance and tyranny of artifice.
Personal Life and Education[edit]
Colleen Plumb lives in Chicago and has taught photography and video at Columbia College Chicago since 1999. Her career in art first started in college learning to draw at the University of Illinois; graduating in 1992 with a BFA from Northern Illinois University in Visual Communication. After this time she worked as a graphic designer for several years until seeking her degree in photography. In 1999 Plumb received an MFA in photography from Columbia College Chicago where she is currently an adjunct faculty member.
Works and Collections[edit]
Plumb's work is held in several permanent collections and has been widely exhibited, including the Portland Art Museum, Milwaukee Art Museum, Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Blue Sky Gallery (a.k.a. The Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts) in Portland, Dina Mitrani Gallery and The Screening Room in Miami, Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona, Jen Bekman Gallery in New York, Union League Club of Chicago, Girls' Club Foundation in Florida, Fidelity Investments in Boston and the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago.
Her work has been part of The Chicago Project at Catherine Edelman Gallery [1] in Chicago since 2005 and the Midwest Photographers Project at the Museum of Contemporary Photography since 2003. She has written for Center for Humans and Nature, an organization dedicated to exploring and promoting human responsibilities in relation to nature, and was a contributor to their book, City Creatures (University of Chicago Press, 2015).
Exhibitions[edit]
Plumb's work has been widely exhibited including solo exhibitions at Blue Sky Oregon Center for the Photographic Arts in Portland, Jen Bekman Gallery in New York, Dina Mitrani Gallery and The Screening Room in Miami, Notebaert Nature Museum in Chicago, The Center for Fine Art Photography in Fort Collins, CO, and van Straaton Gallery in Denver.
In 2017 Plumb installed a large scale video projection at "The Photography Show at AIPAD", at the entrance of Pier 94 in New York.
She has also participated in group exhibitions at Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago, Photographic Center Northwest in Seattle, Pinyao International Photography Festival in China, Griffin Museum of Photography in Massachusetts, Zolla/Lieberman Gallery in Chicago, CITY 2000 at the Chicago Cultural Center, George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, and the U.S. Botanic Garden in Washington D.C. [2]
Thirty Times a Minute[edit]
Thirty Times a Minute (the resting heart rate of an elephant) explores the way animals in captivity function as symbols of persistent colonial thinking, that a striving for human domination over nature has been normalized, and that consumption masks as curiosity. The work sheds light on abnormal behaviors of captive elephants in order to bring attention to implicit values of society as a whole, particularly those that perpetuate power imbalance and tyranny of artifice. The presence of massive, intelligent, far-roaming, emotional animals such as elephants in urban zoos exemplifies contradiction and discordance, and public projections of their image onto urban walls and out-of-context surfaces adds to the layers of incongruity. Aware of the tremendous need to protect native habitat and its residents, this project contributes to the idea that sentient beings are not meant for spectacle or display.
Since 2014 Plumb has installed over 100 public video projections of Thirty Times a Minute. locations (ongoing):
2014: 23 locations in Chicago
2015: 17 locations in Portland, OR; Grand Teton National Park, WY; Victor, ID
2016: Detroit, MI; Santa Fe and Cerillos, NM; Berlin, Germany; Vienna and Melk, Austria; Paris, France; New York, NY
2017: Toronto, Ontario; Rochester, Syracuse, NY; Philadelphia, PA; Washington, D.C.; Cleveland, OH
2018: Reykjavik, Iceland; Los Angeles, CA; Portland, OR; Fort Collins, CO; Omaha, NE; Richmond, VA; Hartford, CT
Plumb traveled to over sixty zoos in the US and Europe, filming captive elephants exhibiting what biologists refer to as stereotypy, a behavior only seen in captive animals, which includes rhythmic rocking, head bobbing, stepping back and forth, and pacing. This compulsive movement is a coping mechanism for stress, and causes debilitating damage to the animals' joints. Thirty Times a Minuteis a video that weaves together dozens of captive elephants, caught in unending cycles of movement, bearing the weight of an unnatural existence in their small enclosures.
Publications[edit]
Colleen Plumb's first photography monograph, Animals Are Outside Today (Radius Books, 2011) critically documents our ambivalent dispositions towards animals. Her focus for nearly two decades has been an inquiry into a society whose appetite for animals, whether in flesh or in reproduction, with admiration or obsession, is voracious. The monograph includes an essay by Lisa Hostetler.
Plumb's work has appeared in LitHub,[3] Psychology Today,[4] Virginia Quarterly Review, The Village Voice,[5] Feature Shoot,[6] Blow Photo Magazine, RealSimple, The New York Times LENS, Time Lightbox, Oxford American, Photo District News (or PDN), and Artillery (magazine).
External links[edit]
- Artist website for Colleen Plumb
- Women In Photography
- Museum of Contemporary Photography Mocp Collection
- Dina Mitrani Gallery
References[edit]
- ↑ Women in Photography. (2013). Retrieved 05 02, 2013, from Women in Photography: http://www.wipnyc.org/blog/colleen-plumb Archived 2013-03-29 at the Wayback Machine
- ↑ "ColleenPlumbbio". Retrieved 2013-05-07.
- ↑ Cooke, Julia (5 December 2017). "Can an Artist Help Captive Elephants Win Legal Personhood?". Literary Hub. Retrieved 25 November 2019.
- ↑ Bekoff, Marc (11 January 2018). "Animals, Exploitation, and Art: The Work of Colleen Plumb". Psychology Today. Retrieved 25 November 2019.
- ↑ Cooke, Julia (5 April 2017). "How Colleen Plumb Uses Her Art to Highlight the Plight of Animals in Captivity". Village Voice. Retrieved 25 November 2019.
- ↑ Rosen, Miss (10 April 2017). "Shedding Light on the Suffering of Animals in Captivity". Feature Shoot. Retrieved 25 November 2019.
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