Amy O’Neill

Born in 1971 in Beaver (Pennsylvania), she lives and works in Brooklyn (New York). Amy O’Neill is recognized for her sculptures, works on paper, installations, and films that draw from vernacular culture and American folklore to blur the line between authenticity and kitsch. She reproduces symbols of local folklore to highlight the power of projection of the objects and places she recreates while questioning the boundary between authenticity and kitsch. Her vernacular approach allows her to explore how objects can be charged with meanings while challenging the distinction between the real and the artificial. Her work stages real situations while revisiting memories with irony and disillusionment in the context of American society steeped in myths. By addressing key elements of 19th to 20th-century popular culture, O’Neill explores references deeply embedded in American culture and the collective unconscious, such as pioneer myths, wilderness, sovereignty, and religion. During her stay in Switzerland, she absorbed certain aspects of Swiss culture and landscape, such as chalets or glaciers, from the perspective of an American tourist. Her work then explores the question of the picturesque between Switzerland and the United States, drawing on documentary research on regional folklore and her own childhood memories. This research includes photographs, postcards, videos, advertisements, and other documents, which serve as the basis for her creations, often realized in the form of installations. Her work Buris Grotto is a series of wooden sculptures created from growths on tree trunks in the forest, appearing to form decorative patterns on the wall.