Press Release:
University of Nevada Las Vegas Department of Art is pleased to present SUPEREAGLE, a new exhibition by Shannon Eakins, Master of Fine Arts (MFA) Candidate. SUPEREAGLE will be on view at the Grant Hall Gallery on the UNLV campus from January 20-21.
Eakins’ installation is the culmination of her work during the past eighteen months in Las Vegas, presenting a mid-way survey of her artistic research in the Master’s Program. Investigating behavioral models, aggression, and temporal/spatial dynamics, the installation consists of new inflatable objects and looped video projects acting upon, through, and in spite of one another.
SUPEREAGLE is a conjuring and translation of Freud’s notion of the Super-ego, realized as an erratically transforming inflatable zebra, looped projection, and series of transportable televisions broadcasting linked videos depicting carefully staged acts of faux-predation. As Eakins has described, the title potentially evokes a child’s attempted articulation of the word (and concept) “Super-ego”—as though misspeaking may actually describe and offer a new—super—totemic figure for addressing the phenomena of attempting to understand and illustrate Freud’s model of intellectual enhancement. SUPEREAGLE? Are you serious? Super-Eagle! Yes! Like the children’s toys that are the subject of her videos (plush wolves disembowel prey and are then themselves disemboweled in a continuous loop of stop-motion trauma), her work attempts to not merely illustrate but rather convey the challenges of manifesting Freud’s visions in our changing world. We are unequipped, we are weak, we are trying, but somehow we always fall short.
Shannon Eakins moved to Las Vegas from Tacoma, where she worked as an educator, glassblower, and dog trainer. Her recent projects address mammalian behavioral models, fear-based targets, and our shared, societal distance to nature. And SUPEREAGLES.
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