Artist-in-Residence

Samara Golden

Samara Golden and FWM Director of Studio Operations Nami Yamamoto. Photo credit: Carlos Avendaño.

Samara Golden started her residency with FWM in 2018, culminating with the presentation of Upstairs at Steve’s, the mind-bending installation on view in the museum’s eighth-floor gallery from September 10, 2020 – February 21, 2021. The exhibition depicts a complete upending of an outdoor tableau set in a seaside landscape, revealing a mysterious confluence of biography, history, psychology, and nature.

As part of her residency, Golden researched patterns found in historical swatch books in noted textile collections. The original intent, as mentioned in a spring 2020 interview with FWM Curator Karen Patterson, was to contrast historic patterning with a screenprinted pattern using thermochromic ink for touchable blankets to be featured in Upstairs at Steve’s. While COVID-19 has since changed the context of the communal handling of surfaces and materials, this research evolved into a limited edition of 18 blankets for sale through FWM.

The Storm at Split Rock blanket has a plaid pattern on one side; throughout is a ribbon that has been printed with thermochromic inks which will change color—from red to safety orange—with touch. This process video provides a glimpse behind-the-scenes of the FWM Studio team testing inks, creating screens, and printing the design on site.

 

 

Artist Bio

American, born 1973, lives in Los Angeles, CA.

Samara Golden graduated from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1995 and received her MFA from Columbia University in 2009. Golden has had solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1, New York; YBCA, San Francisco; Night Gallery, Los Angeles; and CANADA, New York. Her work was included in the 2014 Hammer Biennial, and Room to Live at MOCA Los Angeles. Golden’s most recent project, “The Meat Grinder’s Iron Clothes,” was featured in the 2017 Whitney Biennial. A monograph was published in conjunction with her exhibition at MoMA PS1, and her work has been included in Artforum, Art in America, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Mousse, among other publications. Golden’s work is in the permanent collection of The Whitney Museum, New York; LACMA and MOCA, Los Angeles; The Zabludowicz Collection, London; and The Yuz Museum, Shanghai.