Mary Mattingly

Mary Mattingly (born 1978) is an American visual artist living and working in New York. She was born in Rockville, Connecticut in 1978.^[1] She has studied at Parsons School of Design in New York, and received her Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) from Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon. She is the recipient of a Yale University School of Art Fellowship.

Art

Mattingly explores the themes of home, travel, cartography, and humans' relationships with each other, with the environment, with machines, and with corporate and political entities. She has been recognized for creating photographs and sculptures depicting and representing futuristic and obscure landscapes, for making wearable sculpture, "wearable homes," and for her ecological installations, including the Waterpod (2009).

Career

Her work has been shown at: the International Center of Photography, New York; the Palais de Tokyo, Paris; the Centre Culturel Calouste Gulbenkian, Paris; the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, NY; the New York Public Library; and in exhibitions in Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Italy, and Dubai.

She has had one-person exhibitions at: Robert Mann Gallery,^[2] New York; White Box, New York; Galerie Adler, Frankfurt, Germany, The New School, New York, and other exhibition spaces. In September 2006, the artist's piece titled "The New Mobility of Home" was the cover image of the International Center of Photography's Triennial titled "Ecotopia.”

Mattingly was selected as a shortlist finalist in the inaugural Prix Pictet^[3] global environmental photography competition (2008). She has been awarded artist-residency grants at: New York University; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, New York; Braziers International, Oxfordshire, England; and Yale Summer School of Music and Art, Norfolk, CT.

Opera

In December 2006, she released a multimedia opera at White Box in New York titled Fore Cast.^[4] Fore Cast was positioned as an environmental disaster opera and featured an art installation with music and performances depicting World War IV which was predicted by Albert Einstein:

"I don't know what World War III will be fought with, but I know World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

The gallery was filled with water, sand, and tree stumps with a circular projection that covered the space.

Waterpod

From June through September 2009, Mattingly led a NY-based multinational team of artists, designers, builders, civic activists, scientists, environmentalists, and marine engineers to launch the Waterpod, a free, participatory New York Citywide event docking in all 5 boroughs and at Governors Island. Designed as a new habitat for the global warming epoch, the Waterpod represented a sustainable, sculptural art and technology habitat, with as many as four artists living on and off it, generating food, water, and power in a contained and self-sufficient environment.^[5]

While focusing on collaborative artistic projects, the resident artists emphasized the repurposing and transformation of all forms of materials. The Waterpod included space for: (i) community and artistic activities; (ii) eco-initiatives including food grown with collected rainwater, and gray water recycling, with energy provided from environmental and human sources; and (iii) an artists’ residence. A critical intent of the Waterpod was to showcase the importance of water and the natural world, while serving as a model of an autonomous living system.^[6]

Wearable Home

"In the design of the Wearable Home, I examine the cohesive threads of cultures’ and groups’ clothing throughout the world; from Inuit cultures to saris in India, Muslim, Hindu, Zen Buddhist garments, American Gap, Banana Republic, the Khaki Overcoat, muslin design prototypes, construction uniforms, kimonos, Dockers, safari camouflage, military uniforms, the blandification and brandification of garments spanning cultures worldwide to make one, general look de-emphasizing self and re-emphasizing everything else (collaboration, ideas, survival, modularity, etc.). I think this, over time, is a creative way to think about the outcome of mega-mergers and the illusion of choice, technology and the idea of utopia, as well as wiki-run systems. The result, then, may be that one wearer would be indistinguishable from the other, thus greatly alleviating the threat of the end of privacy. Our distinguishing features would be greatly masked in this context to the naked eye, however the pervasiveness and scrutiny of high-powered networks would still catalog our movements and whereabouts."

Media coverage

Mattingly’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Le Monde Magazine, Financial Times, Nature Magazine, Time Out New York, New York Magazine, The New York Press, ArtForum, Esquire Magazine, Frankfurter Rundschau, and The New York Daily News.

Televised coverage of Mattingly’s work has appeared on BBC News, WNBC, MSNBC, New York 1, Fox News,

References

1. ^ Mary Mattingly ICP Page
2. ^ Mary Mattingly Robert Mann Profile
3. ^ Prix Pictet Mary Mattingly Profile
4. ^ Mary Mattingly Fore Cast an Opera
5. ^ New York Times: A Fluid Definition of Self-Sufficiency
6. ^ Flavorwire: Don't Rock the Boat on The Waterpod Project

External links

• Disjecta
• White Box
• Robert Mann Gallery
• International Center of Photography
• Artcritical.com
• Mary Mattingly

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Name	Mattingly, Mary
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Date of birth	1978
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