Erin Cosgrove: Selected Works

Los Angeles-based artist Erin Cosgrove uses video, animation, performance, and literature in her unique collisions of historical events and popular entertainment. Her work has been exhibited internationally including at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Armory Show in New York City.

This evening's program highlights her animated work, including her most ambitious project to date, What Manner of Person Art Thou? (2004–08). The film depicts the last two survivors of an ancient religious clan that are transported to contemporary society where they dispense justice from above on evil doers. Artforum calls it, "a biting commentary on the modern quest for meaning and on the oft-confused definition of religion and politics, desire and ideology, selfishness and selflessness."

The program also includes A Heart Lies Beneath (2004), a satire based on the Baader-Meinhof Affair that stars Fabio, and her most recent work, Happy Am I (2009), an animated condensation of human evolution. (program app. 75 mins., video)