Location | Maclean 707
Bio
Benjamin Larose is a Quebecois artist and educator. In addition to holding a Master of Design in Fashion, Body and Garment from SAIC, Larose was the recipient of the New Artist Society Scholarship and the distinguished RumChata Foundation Fellowship. In the last year, he presented two solo exhibitions, including a solo booth at EXPO Chicago. Since 2018, he has completed the BOLT residency program at the Chicago Artists Coalition and showed in several group exhibitions at venues such as 6018|North, Ralph Arnold Gallery, Illinois State Museum and John Michael Kohler Art Center in Wisconsin.
Personal Statement
As an artist, my goal is to engage people in conversations about identity, normality and material culture. It is to question how we become who we are, what it means to be normal and how commodity and material culture impact our sense of self and our perception of each other. I think of fashion as a dynamic platform that overlaps with installation, sculpture, performance and video, and my work as sculpture with a Fashion DNA. The zeitgeist of any time period, which is fundamental to fashion, is inherent to the objects we surround ourselves with; the things we buy, discard or preserve. My practice consists of a deep and personal inquiry of these things. I collect everyday objects and put them through a variety of material manipulations to create sculpture. My work subverts the meaning of these normative objects and makes them tell a different story, transporting viewers to a place where difference is no longer seen as threatening but rather depicted as epic and triumphant.
