Shulamit Nazarian congratulates Cammie Staros on receiving a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship for Fine Arts
On April 8, 2020, the Board of Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation approved the awarding of Guggenheim Fellowships to a diverse group of 175 scholars, artists, and writers. Appointed on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise, the successful candidates were chosen from a group of almost 3,000 applicants in the Foundation’s ninety-sixth competition. Guggenheim Fellowships are intended for individuals who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.
Cammie Staros creates sculptures and installations that mine Classical antiquities and the contexts in which we view them. Through a combination of ancient techniques, contemporary sensibility, and museological display, her work folds the past in on itself to reveal semiotic systems developed and reinforced through art history. Staros challenges the dominant narrative, which places the relics of her own Greek lineage at the origin of the Western canon, adding broader regional and epochal references to reflect the overlapping nature of visual influence.
Cammie Staros (b. 1983, Nashville, TN) received her BA from Brown, Providence, in 2006 and her MFA from California Institute of the Arts, Los Angeles, in 2011. Staros has had solo exhibitions at Shulamit Nazarian, Los Angeles, Lefebvre & Fils, Paris, and Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles. The artist is included in the Craft Contemporary’s second clay biennial in Los Angeles. Staros’ work is featured in 100 Sculptors of Tomorrow, a survey of contemporary sculpture, authored by Kurt Beers and published by Thames & Hudson. Staros was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship award in 2020.
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