Madison Donnelly (CV)

Madison Donnelly (b. 1992) makes sculptures in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her artwork asks its viewers to question their perceptions of society and reality by recontextualizing familiar domestic and architectural objects. She asks her viewers to examine the discomfort that arises when a familiar object fails to perform in its expected way. From 2018-2019 she was an artist in residence at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, and her background involves cultivating and organizing the arts and music community in her hometown of Salt Lake. She holds a BFA from the University of Utah, and is earning her MFA in Sculpture from Yale University beginning in fall 2021.

Artist Statement

I create art in a fruitless search for an unmediated self. My work examines the discomfort that arises when familiar domestic objects like beds, baths, and chairs fail to perform in expected ways. I create a dissonance between the impulse to place one’s body inside the sculpture and the sculpture’s refusal to accommodate the viewer’s desire. My sculptures are uncanny and withhold the function their forms suggest they might deliver. Exploring humanity’s emerging relationship to work and materiality in the Anthropocene, my work treats ‘universal’ truths as bendable. What other accepted beliefs can we become conscious of and reject? What do we need to uproot and reassess in 2021?