LOREN SIEMS
From: Louisiana, United States
Based in: Houston, Texas
Born: 1982
Main Artistic Theme: Painting & Sculpture
Web: lorensiemsart.com
Loren Siems’ autobiographical sculptures and paintings evolve from personal places and memories that draw on universal themes of image, gender, and body politics. She bases her work on relationships. She creates a visual language by adapting her childhood imagery and memories to portray her psychological development and anxieties as an adult woman formed from these relationships.
​
ABOUT THE ARTIST
After a decade in NYC, Loren Siems has moved her artistic practice to Houston, TX. She graduated with her Bachelors of Fine Arts in Painting from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette 2005, and received her Masters of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth 2009. Siems has also studied drawing at the University of Sussex in England, Summer 2004.
In 2009, she interned at the international Studios and Curatorial Program in Brooklyn, NY. Siems also worked under artist Jacob Hashimoto in 2010. Since then, she has focused on further developing her own art career. Siems is currently represented by Surmrit Gallery of Art and Design in Brooklyn, NY.
Loren Siems’ autobiographical sculptures and paintings evolve from personal places and memories that draw on universal themes of image, gender, and body politics. She bases her work on relationships: her relationship with her mother, her relationship with her body, and her relationships with men.
​
Siems creates a visual language by adapting her childhood imagery and memories to portray her psychological development and anxieties as an adult woman formed from these relationships. All imagery is directly derived from her body and experiences as a point of departure for a way to visually understand a woman’s view and interaction with the world around her.
Siems expresses nontraditional beauty by playing on nostalgia for traditional beauty and certain ideals of feminine behavior, while urging girls to grow to be strong independent women with a sense of reflection, a respect for the our female predecessors, and a mind for changing the future.
Selected Exhibitions
Performance
Scream
Loren Simes:
"Through my sculptures and videos, I reveal anxious moments derived from interpersonal relationships and provide desired places of comfort from the anxiety of being a girl. My work expresses interplay between erratic emotional turmoil and a need to contain the outbursts in order to remain a functional member of society through mixed media, “boxed-in” rooms, tattered stuffed animals, and provoking performance videos. My videos are expressions of the inner experience along with handmade objects that depict the duality of self between neutral exteriors and erratic interiors.
I draw from my experiences as a woman coming of age and the disdain I have towards my biology. I also recall childhood memories and experiences that continue to resonate; children adopt stuffed animals to transition from the mother, now the child as an adult still requires stuffed animals as a surrogate for intimate relationships so one is provided some sense of companionship and comfort. I am vulnerable, aggressive, and reserved, and share myself with the audience in hopes of evoking their own emotional reactions as a means of comfort."