Sophie Kovel
Bio: Sophie Kovel (b. 1996, Los Angeles) is an artist, writer and translator. Recent exhibitions include the Jewish Museum, New York; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Denmark and VERY Project Space, Berlin. Selected residencies, fellowships and honors include School for Poetic Computation Residency (2020), Vermont Studio Center Residency (2020), Weatherhead East Asian Institute Fellowship (2017), Agnes Martin Fellowship (2021–22) and Andrew Fisher Fellowship (2021–22).
Kovel has spoken on panels and symposiums at universities and institutions including Columbia University and the Brooklyn Public Library. Her interviews and criticism have been published in Artforum, BOMB, the Brooklyn Rail, Frieze, Spike and elsewhere. Currently, she is an MFA Candidate in New Genres at Columbia University, Assistant Editor at BOMB Magazine and in 2022–23, she will be a studio participant in the Whitney Independent Study Program.
Thesis Exhibition
Artist Statement: Gleaning and undermining iconographies of fascism, patriarchy, white supremacy and state power that can take banal and overlooked forms—on flagpoles, doormats, postcards and floral wrapping paper—Kovel reckons with the surfaces and structures that hold up American ideology. Her interventions aim to put a wrench in the spoken and architectural scripts of US nationalism.
L to R: Too heavy for your sidewalk (Floral wrapping paper, two sconce replicas of fixtures at the Metropolitan Republican Club, New York, 2022); 3450–3660 21st Street ( 3:00-minute loop, Surveillance monitor, Super 8 film to digital transfer, black-and-white, silent, 2022, Mark Zuckerberg purchased this home and its surrounding properties at Fair Oaks on 21st Street in San Francisco in late 2012. All documentation used the entity SFRP LLC (California Secretary of State file number: 201225610196) in the acquisition and an additional mansion complex in Palo Alto, in an effort to thwart the use of Zuckerberg’s name and preserve his privacy); Declassified (May 2042), (Dimensions variable, Garage door sweeps, leaked NSA document traced to whistleblower and intelligence specialist Reality Winner, ink; Garage door sweeps, leaked NSA document traced to whistleblower and intelligence specialist Reality Winner, ink, 2022); Caulk lock (8" x 6.5" x 7.25", Replica of the vandalized front door lock system at the Metropolitan Republican Club on October 12, 2018, New York; caulk, 2022, In anticipation of a 2018 lecture by Proud Boys founder, Gavin McInnes, antifascist counter-protests ensued, including an attempt to prevent entry by gluing the club’s keypad lock. As of April 8, 2022, a high-ranking Proud Boys member has pleaded guilty for conspiring to obstruct an official congressional proceeding and assaulting U.S. Capitol police. He and five other members of the Proud Boys and The Oath Keepers will be on trial in the January 6th investigation. In anticipation of a 2018 lecture by Proud Boys founder, Gavin McInnes, antifascist counter-protests ensued, including an attempt to prevent entry by gluing the club’s keypad lock. As of April 8, 2022, a high-ranking Proud Boys member has pleaded guilty for conspiring to obstruct an official congressional proceeding and assaulting U.S. Capitol police. He and five other members of the Proud Boys and The Oath Keepers will be on trial in the January 6th investigation); United States of America v. Reality Leigh Winner (Undecorated), (23 x 17 inches each; 70 x 34 inches overall, within the average dimensions of correctional mattresses in Texas State, Replica of U.S. Air Force badge case fabric on board with missing airforce badges, ribbons, and commemorative medal, 23 x 17 inches, Replica of Reality Winner’s bedspread on board, 2022); United States of America v. Reality Leigh Winner (Undecorated), (imagines the star-spangled case of intelligence specialist, whistleblower, and former airforce officer Reality Winner stripped of its Air Force badges and medals. The accompanying panels refer to an early news headline after she leaked a document outlining Russian election interference, receiving the longest sentence to date for the disclosure: “The World's Biggest Terrorist Has a Pikachu Bedspread.” Stripping Winner down to her comforter, these components allude to her honorific badge case, which together are the dimensions of her Texas correctional mattress.)
First Year Exhibition
Untitled (Welcome), (Flocked coir, carpeted rubber-backed, and waterhog doormats, 2018–2021)
