Alise Anderson

Alise Anderson often makes work from their family’s extensive archives, using humor and absurdity to explore issues of religion, family dynamics and domesticity. Their latest work focuses on Penny, the family's donkey and her unfortunate fate.

Framed along side the piece are excerpts from "These Are My Mountains", a memoir written by Melvin White, Anderson's grandfather. The texts describe his time with Penny and her staring roll in the family's history. The day of Penny’s death coincides with a larger historical moment, and is what initially drew the artist to this project. The work began as atribute to her, and grew outward into questions about memory, symbolism, and how personal stories quietly collide with political ones.

The overlap between a private loss and a national rupture lingers quietly in the background. The donkey, as an image, carries its own political weight. Like much of their broader practice, Anderson is interested inAmerican symbols by filtering them with their family history and own life experience as a queer identifying artist. It asks what happens when national imagery is carried by something as unassuming as a family donkey.