Sara Cwynar and Lucy Gallun on “Glass Life”

Join Aperture for an online conversation between artist Sara Cwynar and curator Lucy Gallun, as they discuss Cwynar’s new book Glass Life (Aperture, 2021). An investigation of color and image-driven consumer culture, Glass Life brings together Cwynar’s multilayered portraits and stills from the films Soft Film (2016), Rose Gold (2017), and Red Film (2018). Gallun and Cwynar will discuss the artist’s multilayered practice and how she pursues photography in relation to film, sculpture, digital culture, and the cultural and technological history of image-making.

This event takes place in conjunction with the June installment of the Museum of Modern Art’s Hyundai Card Video Views, featuring Red Film by Sara Cwynar. You can screen the film on MoMA’s website now until June 22.

Sara Cwynar (born in Vancouver, 1985) graduated with a bachelor of design honors degree from York University in Toronto in 2010. After working as a freelance graphic designer for the New York Times, she earned an MFA in photography from Yale University in 2016. Her debut solo US museum exhibition, Sara Cwynar: Image Model Muse, opened at the Minneapolis Institute of Art in September 2018, prior to traveling to the Milwaukee Art Museum. Cwynar’s Red Film (2018) was included in the 2018 São Paulo Biennial, and she completed a residency at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, in summer 2018. In June 2019, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, Ridgefield, Connecticut, opened Gilded Age, a solo show of her work. Cwynar has independently published several artist books, including Kitsch Encyclopedia and Pictures of Pictures (both 2014). She is represented by Foxy Production, New York; Cooper Cole Gallery, Toronto; and The Approach, London. In January 2021, the largest installation of her work to date opened at Remai Modern, Saskatoon, Canada.

Lucy Gallun is associate curator in the Department of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Since joining MoMA in 2010, Gallun has curated numerous exhibitions, including three iterations of the museum’s New Photography series. Her most recent exhibitions, Projects: Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill and Artist’s Choice: Yto Barrada—A Raft, are currently on view. Gallun is coeditor and contributing author of Photography at MoMA, a three-volume history of photography at the museum (2015­–17). Her most recent book is Robert Frank: Trolley—New Orleans (2021), part of MoMA’s One on One series.

Image: Sara Cwynar, Film still from Red Film, 2018, from Glass Life (Aperture, 2021). © Sara Cwynar