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Amber Hawk Swanson
(American, b. 1980; resides in Chicago, IL)
still from Not a Feminist Way of Thinking: Daddy’s Little Girl, 2006
To Hold, Cake Cut, 2007, from the Amber Doll project
still from Other Things To Do, 2005
Starting with sorority sisters and ending with her own mother, Amber Hawk Swanson scripts her ten videos from The Feminism? Project (2005-2006) from edited interviews with a variety of women. Their original responses to the topic of feminism range from naïve surprise to composed discourse, but become flip one-liners and ironic ramblings when voiced by Swanson in valley-girl intonation and enacted in provocatively sexual contexts.
In a subsequent project, Swanson commissioned a sex doll to be made in her exact likeness. With “Amber Doll” she created several performances, photographs, and videos for her series To Have, To Hold, and To Violate: Amber and Doll (2006-2008), including Las Vegas Wedding Ceremony (2007), in which Swanson married her doll in a staged ceremony and reception while wearing matching white dresses. Other performances documented on video and with photographs include bringing Amber Doll to football tailgating parties and adult industry conventions. Amber and Doll investigates female objectification—and women willingly participating in their objectification—through a complicated and questionably feminist lens.
Amber Hawk Swanson completed two BFA degrees at Iowa State University (Printmaking and Graphic Design, 2002), and an MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2006). Exhibitions, performances, and screenings include Cheat Codes: Lessons in Love, Vanderbilt University, Nashville; Urban Art Projects Performance Art Festival, Williamsburg, Brooklyn; Re:Figure, Glass Curtain Gallery, Chicago; Artist Run Chicago, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago; To Have, To Hold, and To Violate: Amber and Doll (solo exhibition), Locust Projects Gallery, Miami; Reeling: The 25th Annual Chicago Lesbian and Gay International Film Festival, Chicago; and Conversations At The Edge, Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago.