Otherworldly, provocative, and strange, Awake in the Dream World
channels the looming, historical grimness of the classic fairy tale,
illuminating the dichotomy between the real and imagined through the
context of fantasy, and bringing to life a macabre ensemble of folkloric
characters. Awake in the Dream World is a mid-career retrospective of
artist and author Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife,
bestselling novel turned feature film), reflecting her talent for
cultivating a captivating narrative exclusively through pictures and her
own confrontations with life, mortality, and magic.
Niffenegger's fantastical body of work is reminiscent of renowned pen
and ink predecessors such as Edward Gorey, Aubrey Beardsley, Egon
Schiele, Edward Dulac, and Horst Janssen, but with a brutally honest and
unapologetically strange female perspective that touches upon the
universal trials of life-death and decay, love, jealousy, redemption,
and the inevitability of change. Her works on paper, lithographs, and
aquatints reflect the often surreal narratives of her artist's books.
Through self-portraiture, Niffenegger reveals her own self-assurance and
whimsy alongside anxiety and loneliness, probing darker corners of the
human heart and mind, often exploring the hopeless struggle with what
Shakespeare called this bloody tyrant, Time.
Essays by Audrey Niffenegger, National Museum of Women in the Arts
Curator of Book Arts Krystyna Wasserman, and Art Institute of Chicago
Curator and School of the Art Institute Professor Mark Pascale explore
the artist's influences and work.
Published in conjunction with the June 21-November 10, 2013 exhibition
at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
