Tara Fay Coleman
Marginalia
January 28 – March 4, 2023
527 N. Taylor Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15212
Tara Fay Coleman is best-known for her performance work and conceptual-based practice that harnesses trauma and vulnerability as a vehicle to communicate her own lived experience as a black woman, mother, and artist. Largely self-taught, Coleman first debuted as an artist in April 2018 through her performance piece, Flow State, at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, PA. In Flow State, Coleman had her hair braided in the middle of Deana Lawson’s solo exhibition at the Carnegie Museum. Through this performance, Coleman hoped to build a conversation around the sometimes-performative nature of identity that would pervade much of her subsequent practice.
In Marginalia, Coleman presents her first series of text-based work—nine large screen prints of screenshots from the Notes app on her iPhone aptly named, iPhone Notes. The definition of ‘marginalia’ technically refers to the marks (the “notes”) made in the margins of a book or document. Coleman takes the word at face value, but also comments on how women are consistently relegated to the margins. In that context, Coleman sees herself as operating on the periphery, note-taking, yet at the same time, rewriting, correcting, and annotating history in hopes of it being improved by succeeding generations.
Heavily influenced by conceptual French artist, Sophie Calle, who used text-based work and performance in a highly autobiographical practice, Coleman sees her iPhone Notes as a sort of self-archive and exhibiting them as a form of exhibitionism. What started as grocery lists and to-dos evolved into at times funny and at other times emotional quips on Coleman’s identity as an artist. However, the sentiments of each Note are highly relatable—the woes of a transactional artworld, the artworld’s obsession with one-dimensional identity, and so on. Through these iPhone Notes, Coleman uses language to comment on the culture and systems that govern women, especially women of color, in the art world.
Tara Fay Coleman (b. 1987, Buffalo, NY) has exhibited her work throughout Pittsburgh. Recent group exhibitions include Sibyls Shrine: Taking Care, Silver Eye Center for Photography, Pittsburgh, PA; GLARE, Brew House Association, Pittsburgh, PA and Select Works on Paper, The August Wilson African American Cultural Center, Pittsburgh, PA. Coleman has performed at the Carnegie Museum of Art (2018); Pittsburgh Performance Art Festival (2019) and the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh (2022). The artist lives and works in Pittsburgh, PA.
