Fair Trade: Bari Ziperstein, Artist-in-Residence 2017

Ceramicist and sculptor Bari Ziperstein has built an artistic practice at the crossroads of traditional craft, feminist critique, conceptual theory and historical research. For the past several years her work has examined conflicting images of the female form in contemporary society and, in so doing, she attempts to decode and unravel the various societal norms that both propel and restrain women’s progress.

Ziperstein’s Artist-in-Residence project at the AD&A Museum builds upon this earlier work but is newly rooted in her research visits to the Wende Museum, a repository of cold war artifacts. Using Russian communist propaganda as her starting point,the artist will create a dynamic installation that brings together a series of new ceramic sculptures—vessels and decorative panels—that borrow and manipulate Communist government-sanctioned images of women. These works will form part of a faux trade show booth that is based on actual, detailed specifications established by the Communist Russian government for commercial, industrial fairs.