School of Art + Art History Assistant Professor Lisa Iglesias (MFA Art ’06) has maintained an evolving collaboration with her sister, Janelle, for the past 10 years. When Sara Shaoul, a conceptual artist and curator, developed the exhibition My brother is a Liar, she contacted the sisters for a studio visit to discuss their work. Las Hermanas Iglesias, one aspect of their collaboration, is project-based practice they extend beyond their own specializations of drawing and sculpture into all kinds of spaces—performance, video, photography and social practice. Las Hermanas Iglesias often deals with familial dynamics and addresses the very act of collaboration.
The exhibition grew directly out of Shaoul’s own practice and investigation into how familial, relational and emotional work is understood within an art historical context.
“Janelle, myself and Sara met in our Brooklyn studio where we discussed our collaborative work as Las Hermanas,” says Iglesias. “She was interested in how our ongoing Competitions Project and our Commiserate Series speak to resemblance and sibling rivalry.”
Some of the digital photographs in My Brother Is a Liar are from an ongoing series of absurd contests between the sisters that began when they were living and working together in close quarters at the La Cité internationale des arts through the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council’s Paris Residency Program in 2010.
“We hadn't lived together since our teenage years, and in Paris we quickly experienced many of the challenges of in depth collaboration and cohabitation,” says Iglesias. “We decided to use the challenges of our sibling dynamic as the very material for a project and began to engage in productive competitions and contests.”
My Brother is a Liar explores the visual representation of relational bonds through a variety of artists and mediums. The exhibition runs from until January 23, 2016 at 601Artspace in New York.
