Nancy Baker Cahill

Nancy Baker Cahill (born 1970) is an American multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, California. She is known for work at the intersection of fine art, social justice, and emerging technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality.

Early Life and education

Baker Cahill was born in Cambridge, MA. She received her B.A. with Honors in Art from Williams College in 1992. She launched her art career in 2007.[1]

Work

Baker Cahill works in graphite, paint, sculpture, video, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR).[2][3] She is the Founder and Creative Director of the 4th Wall public art app.[4] Her work explores themes related to the human body as a site of ongoing struggle and resistance,[5][6] “[dissecting] notions of power moving over and through the body.”[7]

One series, Bullet Blossoms, involved Baker Cahill shooting her paintings with bullets.[8] Exhibition highlights include the site-specific 2019 Desert X Biennial in the Coachella Valley.[9][10] Baker Cahill generated large scale, animated drawings in AR for the Salton Sea and above the wind farms in the Coachella Valley.[11][12] She had a solo exhibition at Boston Cyberarts,[13] an AR public art exhibition at the Boston Greenway, a VR public art project on the Sunset Digital Billboards[14] sponsored by Innovation Foundation, a VR/AR event at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), and an immersive solo exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of California Art.[15][16][17][18]

Baker Cahill is the recipient of a 2012 ARC Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation, was a 2019 nominee for the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant, and received an "Impact Maker to Watch" award at LA City Hall.[19][20][21] She was the subject of a 2019 Bloomberg Media Studios "Art+Technology" short documentary.

Baker Cahill is an international public speaker. She was a featured 2018 TEDx speaker in Pasadena, CA and delivered a keynote at Games for Change in New York City, NY.[22][23][24] In 2020, the Berggruen Institute announced that Baker Cahill would be one of its ten inaugural Artist Fellows in its Transformations of the Human program.[25][26]

Liberty Bell

On July 4, 2020, Baker Cahill launched "Liberty Bell," an augmented reality public art installation in partnership with Art Production Fund, Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy, and Rockaway Artists Alliance.[27][28] "Liberty Bell" featured site-specific artwork in six locations across the Eastern United States: the site of the Boston Tea Party revolt in Boston; Fort Sumter in Charleston; the “Rocky Steps” leading to the Philadelphia Museum of Art; Fort Tilden, the U.S. Army installation in Rockaway, Queens, NY; the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where the “Bloody Sunday” attack took place in 1965; and the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C.

According to The New York Times, the project took "fifteen months" to develop and sites were chosen "where American history is still being interpreted, its Constitution tested and its identities forged."[29] The AR installations are accessible for free through the 4th Wall App, and will remain available for a year following July 4, 2020.[30]

In an interview with Artnet, Baker Cahill explained that the visual aesthetic of "Liberty Bell," "an animated coil of red, white, and blue brushstrokes roughly in the shape of that famed artifact that seems to float in the air," was intended to question, "how the very concept of liberty was flawed from the beginning. It was available to a select group of people and not others.... You can’t talk about liberty without actively and rigorously engaging the history of slavery.”[31]

Smithsonian Magazine called "Liberty Bell" "ambitious" and notable for its timeliness, writing, "['Liberty Bell'] debuts at a unique point in American history, when communities are reckoning with the racist legacies of historical monuments across the country and, in many cases, taking them down."[32] In a partnership announcement regarding the Washington D.C. installation of "Liberty Bell," the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden wrote that, "As 'Liberty Bell' sways above the pool, AR shadows will be cast over the water. The image will create a literal and metaphorical reflective experience for viewers as they are invited to question the very concept of liberty.”

4th Wall augmented reality app

In 2018, Baker Cahill founded the 4th Wall public art app with developer Drive Studios.[33][34] 4th Wall is the AR platform through which Baker Cahill exhibits her own 3D drawings as well as curates public art exhibitions in AR.[35] Curate LA referred to 4th Wall as, "a tool of public engagement and subversive social practice, [offering] a virtual space for fellow artists and collaborators: sites of cultural, historical, or political significance use geolocation information to reveal untold stories or conceptual ideas."[36]

The first version of the app featured Baker Cahill's studio in 360 and a hologram of herself talking about the conceptual foundation of her work.[37] The 4th Wall app includes “Coordinates,” a series of curated and site-specific public art exhibitions in AR.[38]

Social justice and activism

Baker Cahill's work as an artist and curator have been noted for an emphasis on social justice, collaboration, and activism, with the LA Times calling her work "unapologetically political."[39][40]

From 2010–2012, Baker Cahill led a collaborative art project at Homeboy Industries called "Exit Wounds." It involved a creative process in which participants from Homeboy Industries told "their stories through their own photographs, original art, text and other objects. Once the works were created they were then shot at with a .45 caliber handgun by Baker Cahill. Using mixed media, these personal narratives revolve around violence, loss and the hope for a future."[41] Works from this project were exhibited throughout Los Angeles as part of the Craft Contemporary (formerly CAFAM)’s “Folk Art Everywhere” program.[42]

Baker Cahill has also used the 4th Wall app as a platform for site-specific public art in augmented reality.[43]

Coordinates

Using the 4th Wall app, Baker Cahill initiated “Coordinates," an ongoing series of global, collaborative, curated & geo-located thematic AR public art exhibitions.[44][45] Among the first participating Coordinates artists were artists Beatriz Cortez, Micol Hebron, Tanya Aguiñiga and Shizu Saldamando.[46][47]

Defining Line

In November 2018, Baker Cahill co-curated “Defining Line” along the Los Angeles River with the artist Debra Scacco, in which augmented reality artworks were "placed at distinct points along the L.A. River, the works deal with urban redevelopment, environmental issues, untold Native histories and patterns of gentrification."[48]

Battlegrounds

In October 2019, Baker Cahill co-curated “Battlegrounds” with Jesse Damiani.[49] The citywide exhibition focused on contested sites in New Orleans, LA, featuring 30 artworks in augmented reality from 24 artists, including Dawn DeDeaux and Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick. In an interview with the LA Times, Baker Cahill called "Battlegrounds" a "reclamation of history," explaining that "every artist in this show, whether it's quietly and poetically or more outspoken, are engaging directly with their community, with their environment, with their history, their own lived experience."[39]

In Plain Sight

The 4th Wall app was the augmented reality platform used for the In Plain Sight project, which featured both real and augmented reality skywriting located over U.S. detention centers from 80 different artists.[50] According to The New York Times, the texts consisted of "messages of solidarity and defiance typed in the sky to highlight the plight of immigrants held in detention centers."[51] The use of augmented reality allowed In Plain Sight to "continue to exist in myriad forms after the last clouds of vapor have evaporated."[52]

Grants and awards

2020: Fellow, Berggruen Institute, Santa Monica, CA

2019: Artist in Residence, Facebook, Los Angeles, CA

2019: Honoree, Fulcrum Arts Benefit, 2019

2019: Official Selection, Games for Change Immersive Arcade

2019: Nominee for Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant, 2019

2019: Impact Maker to Watch 2019, Stratiscope, City Hall, Los Angeles, CA

2014: Herradura Art Competition, Los Angeles 2nd Place 2014

2012: ARC Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation

References
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  3. "SURDS and MANIFESTOS: The Drawings of Nancy Baker Cahill". Peripheral Vision Press. Retrieved 2019-11-18.
  4. Mustatea, Kat. "This Artist Just Entered The Age Of Augmented Reality By Releasing Her Own Mobile App". Forbes. Retrieved 2019-11-18.
  5. "Review: "May Contain Explicit Imagery" at CB1 Gallery". Los Angeles Times. 2014-08-19. Retrieved 2019-11-18.
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