SAINT LOUIS, MO.- The Saint Louis Art Museum presents Martha Colburn: Triumph of the Wild, a New Media Series installation by artist and filmmaker Colburn. The 10-minute animated film (2008-09) presents the history of American war from Bunker Hill to Baghdad through shifting moments of horror and destruction.
Deploying hand-colored animation, collage, found imagery, and a novel use of jigsaw puzzles, Colburn uses the varying media to portray the tragedy of war and its impact on humanity as well as the natural world and its animals.
“Collapsing more than two centuries into ten minutes, Colburn captures the graphic landscape of war,” said Tricia Y. Paik, assistant curator of modern and contemporary art. “The film offers a frenetic, whirlwind narrative of an epic topic, which is both accessible and brutally honest.”
Born in the Appalachian Mountains of southern Pennsylvania, Colburn received her B.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1994. She has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Frankfurter Kunstverein in addition to significant group exhibitions such as the 2006 Whitney Biennial and the 2011 SITE Santa Fe International Biennial. The artist lives and works in New York City.
Martha Colburn: Triumph of the Wild is on view at Saint Louis Art Museum in Gallery 301 from June 17 through September 5, 2011.
