Showcasing work that reflects experiences often underrepresented in gallery and museum spaces, Allison Baker’s Fever Dream opens August 19 in the Basile Gallery at Herron School of Art and Design's Eskenazi Hall, located at 735 W. New York St. This vibrant exhibition features new works in sculpture, collage, and video that explore the interplay of desire, domesticity, and social stratification. Baker is a first-generation college student with an M.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design known for work that explores the complexities of late-stage capitalism. Her monumental public sculptures highlight the aspirations and struggles of the American working class and working poor, aiming to humanize the ripple effects of poverty and challenge dominant narratives.
In Fever Dream, Baker employs bold color in sculptures of flaccid silicone foliage and drooping gardening gloves arranged on domestic furnishings stripped of their functionality. Her cut-paper collages place these uncanny objects within fantastical psychosexual landscapes. Through her transformation of mundane items like shelves, vases, and rugs into hallucinatory visions of domestic discontent, Baker offers a wry and humorous critique of how our possessions can embody and manifest anxiety.
Baker, an associate professor of sculpture at Herron School of Art and Design, has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, including at the CICA Museum, Spartanburg Art Museum, Hashimoto Contemporary, and Franconia Sculpture Park, where her largest public sculpture is currently displayed. Baker was recently selected as a 2024 Indiana University Presidential Arts and Humanities Fellow.