Cushla Donaldson
Shared Lines: Aotearoa in Japan exhibiting artist
Burnout Bride, 2019
The Burnout Bride is inspired by a photographic standard wedding photo shot amongst those engaged with car culture. The Bride stands in the exhaust of a 'burnout' often produced by the groom in his vehicle. It speaks to an unnamed, unacknowledged feminism existing in polluted masculinity. This misty nostalgic romanticism is reinterpreted by this counter culture with what could be read as a dirty and destructive activity, evoking early working class encounters with the industrial revolution.
Cushla Donaldson is an award-winning artist currently based in Tāmaki Makaurau, Aotearoa. In her exhibitions and artistic practice she engages collaboratively in research, activism and movements of social justice.
Through investigative and research processes that involve engagement with both technical and conceptual modes of inquiry, her work aims to illuminate routes to parity and what lies beyond currently inured hierarchical systems and structures.
She graduated from Elam School of Fine Arts before gaining her MFA from Goldsmiths College, University of London, as a recipient of the Anne Reid Scholarship. Donaldson has exhibited in Aotearoa, Australia, Europe and Japan.