Carolyn Lazard
A Conspiracy, 2017. Dohm noise machines, dimensions variable.
This piece is comprised of a series of white noise machines installed in a grid on the ceiling. Noise machines are traditionally used as sleep aids and as privacy aids in therapists’ offices. The installation utilizes the sculptural and architectural qualities of therapeutic sound as a protective cover for care, gossip, and conspiracy. A machine that is meant to produce a soothing noise when multiplied becomes oppressive, leaving viewers to draw their own connections between the traumatizing and therapeutic sides of the health care industry.
PAIN SCALE, 2019. Wall vinyl, 12 × 148 inches.
Drawing from a pain scale—a metric for communication between doctors and patients—this work is a formal meditation on race-based health care disparities and the legibility of black pain. Black Americans are systematically undertreated for pain relative to white Americans, and thus receive a lower standard of care. Lazard visualizes the experience of being diagnosed with racial bias rather than trust and understanding by providing a scale with only one shade.
BIOGRAPHY
Born: Los Angeles, California, 1987
Resides: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Education: University of Pennsylvania (M.F.A., 2019);
Bard College (B.A., 2010)
SELECTED SOLO AND TWO PERSON EXHIBITIONS
2018 “Epigenetic: Juliana Huxtable and Carolyn Lazard,” Shoot the Lobster, New York.
“If You Can’t Share No One Gets Any, Carolyn Lazard and Collective Text,” LUX, London.
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2020 “Colored People Time,” MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
2019 “Civic Duty,” Cell Project Space, London.
“Whitney Biennial,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
“The Body Electric,” Walker Art Center, Minneapolis.
2018 “Post Institutional Stress Disorder,” Kunsthal Aarhus, Denmark.
“5 Sculptures,” Essex Street, New York.
2017 “Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon,” New Museum, New York.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
2019 Pyś, Pavel. “Health and the Mundane: Carolyn Lazard on the Malleable Body,” Walker Reader (October 1).
Smith, Giulia. “Profile: Carolyn Lazard,” Art Monthly (September).
Watlington, Emily. “Critical Creative Corrective Cacophonous Comical: Closed Captions,” Mousse (Summer).
Husni-Bey, Adelita. “Open Access,” Artforum (May 29).
2018 Dublon, Amalle. “Girl Talk and Hold Music: On the Sculptural Poetics of Chat.” TDR: The Drama Review (Spring).
Sutphin, Eric. “First Look: Carolyn Lazard,” Art in America (November).
2017 Anania, Katie, “Sick Time, Sleepy Time, Crip Time: Against Capitalism’s Temporal Bullying” Artforum (April).