Anna Gaskell: Half Life

Anna Gaskell is prominent among a generation of artists who emerged in the late 1990s and have redefined the landscape of contemporary art, building upon cinematic strategies pioneered a decade earlier by artists such as Cindy Sherman and Laurie Simmons. Gaskell and others of her generation have invented an entirely new discourse, one in which narrative is disrupted, lacking closure and connectivity. Gaskell goes further yet, creating bodies of work that appear to tell stories but confound one's ability to draw clear connections between the different images within a given series. In Half Life, a new project commissioned by The Menil Collection, Gaskell draws inspiration from stories like Rebecca, The Old Nurse, and The Turn of the Screw, to create an installation of video and photography that plumbs the dark recesses of the human psyche, embodying a sense of fear, isolation, and uncertainty. Accompanied by the first published biography and bibliography on the artist, as well as an interview and essay by Matthew Drutt, curator of the project, with contributions by Niall Mackenzie and Francis McKee.