Kaucyila Brooke  

Kaucyila Brooke is an artist based in Los Angeles and through her multidisciplinary practice, she addresses the politics of cultural production and sexual representation. In diverse narrativized and serial formats—including large-scale photomontages, photo novellas, and photographic archives—she reevaluates the status of the photograph as object. In "Tit for Twat," an ongoing photomontage series Brooke began in 1993 that recodes the biblical creation myth of Genesis, she restages the narrative with reference to lesbian sexual identity. Pursuing a structural approach that is inherently allegorical, the work opens upon a range of interpretation brought about by the juxtaposition of disparate photographic fragments. In "Alma Mater" (2009), a five channel video installation, women scholars and artists enact a feminist peripatetic pedagogy as they walk through the 19th century arcades of the University of Vienna populated by the busts of 154 male scientists and scholars. In Brooke’s performative slide lecture "Where Does the Venus Come From?" (2009, 2015) as Dr. Julia Savage, she discusses the unknown origins of the prehistoric figurine known as the Venus von Willendorf and traces the 19th century’s masculinist bias in such academic sciences as anthropology and archeology. In "The Boy Mechanic" (1996–ongoing), she documents a social history of lesbian bars by photographing their present and former locations in cities such as San Diego, Cologne, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.

In 1990, she and Jane Cottis also co-produced DRY KISSES ONLY which uses manipulated film, clips and humorous commentary to explore the lesbian subtext in classic Hollywood films. Brooke’s work has been shown in a number of international galleries and institutions, including solo exhibitions at Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles, (2013, 2010); The Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Germany (2012); Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna (2006, 2008, 2012); Silberkuppe, Berlin (2009); Alfred Ehrhardt Foundation/ Forum für Fotographie, Cologne; Andersen-s Contemporary, Copenhagen, (2006), NAK, Aachen, Germany; Kunstverein Springhornhof, Neuenkirchen, Germany (2005); plattform, Berlin (2004), Art Resources Transfer, New York (2001,1999). Kaucyila Brooke has also been a regular faculty member of the Program in Photography and Media at CalArts since 1992, and served as Program Director (1999 –2004) and Program Co-Director (1994-1999, 2013-2015). (01/20)