Aaron Wilder
Aaron Wilder | Photo credit: Emma McDonald
Aaron Wilder is an interdisciplinary artist and recently moved to Chicago from San Francisco. He uses the personal and the space between the analog and the digital, the public and the private, and the unassuming and the instigative as the creative means to explore the introspective and social processes of contemporary culture. He describes his artistic approach as binding with anthropology, sociology, and psychology, to drive stronger collaborations and cross-dialogue from a plurality of perspectives and different backgrounds.
Artist in Residence 2021 | Aaron Wilder| Title: Delivered Under the Similitude of a Dream. 2017. Photo credit: Aaron Wilder. Installation at the San Francisco Mint in San Francisco, CA.
Image description: A single yellow plastic school chair sits in the corner of the room on top of a collection of books. There is nothing else on the floor around it. A single lamp stands in front of the chair, spotlighting the installation. The walls are covered from floor to ceiling in pages from books.
The Project
For his HCL residency Wilder is developing a community-centered work about the relationship of societal expectations to lived experiences from childhood to adulthood. Wilder envisions the work to take shape as an installation at Mana Contemporary, drawing from video and audio recordings of conversations and incorporating original two-and three-dimensional objects.
The research consists of a large-scale study of individuals from across the gender spectrum, ethnicity, age, wealth, religion, and political views. Wilder is creating a rigorous qualitative interview guide for one-on-one interviews over the year. In addition, Wilder plans to host a series of public talks to push the study’s criticality, reflection, and insights through other means. The HCL studio is the site of the planned activities as well as the repository of collected materials and eventually Wilder’s fabrication shop.
Artist Bio
Aaron Wilder is originally from Arizona, where he grew up in a conservative evangelical Christian environment. He is a self-taught artist and incorporates the early experience in a life-work against racism, sexism, homophobia, and prejudice against other religions. A driving objective for him is to better understand social constructs. Since receiving an MFA from San Francisco Art Institute he continues self-learning from collaborations using new media. Major influences are the artists Tania Bruguera, Adrian Piper, Pedro Reyes, Postcommodity, Jacolby Satterwhite, Dread Scott, Taryn Simon, Hank Willis Thomas, and Fred Wilson.
His collaborative exhibitions include “Expletive Chapel: Lavender Heights” (2019), an installation centered on the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ community members in Sacramento; “Alternative Dementia” (2017), an installation intersecting five artistic practices without attribution, “Sugar & Snails” (2016/2017), photography and public interventions, and “See/Saw” (2016/2017), a publication.
Website: aaronwilder.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/aaronwilderart
Instagram: @aaronwilderart
Twitter: @aaronwilderart
Vimeo: www.vimeo.com/aaronwilder