Shawne Major Folie à Deux

A reflection of the “interior world of intensely codependent relationships,” Shawne Major’s Folie à Deux invites viewers to engage in a shared psychosis composed of linear-shaped objects in tandem with organic line drawings to create mixed-media collages. By creating multiple overlapping and explosive layers with materials such as charger cables, ropes, holiday lights among others, Major mirrors the contradictory emotions of the human condition, allowing viewers to independently confront their own connotations of specific materials within the greater context of the work. By engaging these materials, Major interrogates how her compositions with the “messy and detritus” can function as metaphors for one’s own collective memory, often comprised of debris and ephemera itself.

Shawne Major is a contemporary mixed-media artist located in Opelousas, Louisiana. Born in New Iberia, LA, she received her BFA in Painting from the University of Southwestern Louisiana and her MFA in Sculpture from Rutgers University. In 2008, Major exhibited in the Prospect. 1 New Orleans Biennial. She has grant awards from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation and the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Her work is in the collections of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute of American Art; New Orleans Museum of Art, the Ogden Museum of Southern Art; the Hilliard Museum of Art, Lafayette, and Art in Embassies program, Brazzaville, Congo. Major’s work is collected nationally and she has been awarded artist residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Yaddo and Art Omi, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and the Joan Mitchell Center. Central motifs in Major’s most recent works include memory, loss, fear, and subversion of “junk” materials into high art.

Charles Schultz is the Managing Editor of the Brooklyn Rail. His art criticism has been published in numerous magazines and his essays on artists have been commissioned for artist monographs. Schultz lives and works in New York.