Photo by Chris Baker & Defne Tutus
Bio
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Rose Malenfant is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, educator and curator from New York, based in Brooklyn. Her sculptural practice is material and process oriented, centered in cycles of the body and environment. Rose uses a variety of techniques and materials including nylon pantyhose, bioplastic, silicone, gravity and time.
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Rose is an artist in residence at Textile Arts Center AIR cycle 16. Her work has been exhibited by galleries throughout Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens including El Barrio Art Space, Atlantic Gallery, and the Factory LIC. She has received awards from The Art Students League of New York and the International Society of Experimental Artists. Rose continues to invest in her practice with the Textile Study Group of New York and The Alternative Art School.
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Rose was a recipient of Beam Center’s Artist in Residency Program on Governors Island, New York 2022 where she continues to work as a project designer mentoring young artists through collaborative projects and public art.
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Rose's curatorial work includes "Semi-Permeable" at Living Skin, Brooklyn, New York and "Propagation- Suspended Roots" at Studio 9D New York, New York.
Artist Statement
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I transform fibers as a form of embodiment. Examining repetition through the lens of labor, compulsion, and conscious ritual. I’m interested in how we change ritual and how in turn, ritual changes us over time.
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My practice revolves around material exploration. I often work with nylon hosiery, viewing the material with charged associations of women’s bodies and societal conditioning. Nylon carries a loaded history rooted in mass production, industrialization, labor and commodification. By transforming the material, I create new associations, reclaiming something familiar yet restrictive.
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I’m intrigued by our bodies' protective responses. I investigate how materiality seeks to protect itself, experimenting with how natural and synthetic “skins” hold memory. I work “merging memories” through techniques mimicking implantation. By grafting organic matter and fabricated nylon together, I construct new hybrid memories of symbiosis reclaiming our poisoned environment and bodies.
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My process ranges from hand stitching, to marinating textiles, examining how touch can both harm and heal. I use my body and earth as armature and I often see my work as collaborations with gravity and time. Through these various techniques I examine the body as dually an accumulation, and filtration system, materialized through sculpture and installations.