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Danielle Dean

danielleadean

Artist

Danielle Dean, Trainers, 2014, 6th Athens Biennale 2018 ANTI, photo by Nysos Vasilopoulos
Danielle Dean, Trainers, 2014, 6th Athens Biennale 2018 ANTI, photo by Nysos Vasilopoulos

Trainers (2014)

Danielle Dean’s installation at AB6 is conceived around her work Trainers (2014), a video in which five women train to become revolutionaries or neoliberal consumers. Based on extensive research into Nike commercials produced between 1988 and 2014, Dean creates a set drawing on Spike Lee’s 1990s Urban Jungle Gym campaign for Nike. Combining a highly abstract stage set based on sneaker designs and alluding to abstraction in art history, Dean investigates the normalization of radical discourses and their absorption into mainstream culture. The video Trainers is exhibited in an ambiguous setting between a basketball court, a military training ground, and a shopping center. The environment created for AB6 conflates different rules and behaviors expectable and appropriate to each space, while establishing a dialogue between the assemblages of leisure, capitalism, militarization, and consumer culture.

 

#basketball #abstraction #spikelee #radicaldiscourse #trainers #consumerculture


photos: Nysos Vasilopoulos, 6th Athens Biennale 2018 ANTI

Trainers, 2014
Video installation, HD video, 8'11''
Nike advertising campaigns, 1988–2014
Courtesy of the artist