Dawn Kasper (born 1977 in Fairfax, Virginia) is a New York-based interdisciplinary artist working across genres of performance, installation, sculpture, drawing, photography, video, and sound.
The piece, entitled The Sun, The Moon, and The Stars (2017), was an installment of her ongoing "Nomadic Studio Practice" series, and consisted of various art supplies, work tables, drumsets, loudspeakers, and furniture.
'[3] Writing in the catalogue for the Biennale, Marie Sarré notes: “The fusion between art and life and the desire to sunder ‘the fourth wall’ are at the heart of her pursuit.
[5] Following Chris Burden, Paul McCarthy, Mike Kelley, Gina Pane, Marina Abramović, and Jason Rhoades, Kasper's early work explored themes of "absence, death, and uncertainty," and reminded audiences "that art should never be safe.
As Rachel Mason describes: "For years, Dawn could be spotted, dead, at art events all over Los Angeles, in the tradition of Harold and Maude, sprawled out in an elaborate shrine to some horrific accident.
[15] For her 2014 solo exhibition & sun & or THE SHAPE OF TIME at David Lewis, New York,[16] Kasper presented "elements" activated by performance, evoking “the presence of a shaman with great powers, someone able to tap into something deep, maybe dark, and to be watched carefully.” [17] The show was divided into five elemental "stations" in which a hazmat-suited Kasper intermittently performed: Fire, represented by "a tangle of tape and record players, mixers, a laptop, and percussion instruments "; Aether, by stacked tubs of Wiffle balls; Earth, by a lawnmower; Air, by a wooden table; and Water, by a yellow dresser containing photos, papers, and clothing.
The exhibition, Cluster, included 63 cymbals arranged in groups throughout the gallery, all wired to electronic devices that sensed visitors’ movements and played the instruments in response.
She describes the piece as "a 'visual poem' performance action in which I collaborate with a group of musicians to create a structured experimental music composition to invoke the feeling of hoarding human emotions.