Tiffany Adler

Tiffany Adler is GlogauAIR resident
from January, 2024 to March, 2024

Tiffany Adler is an American artist practicing in Los Angeles, CA. Her interests lie both in the process of sculpture, as well as the conceptualization, fabrication, and construction of a scene, in service of communicating alternative narratives within classical frameworks of representation and architectural forms.

In her project, What if Vitruvius was a Woman? She takes the idealisation of “the perfect man” as a point of juxtaposing an alternative and abstract representation through symbols, form, the body, and movement, entertaining the idea of what might be if Vitruvian was a woman. By exchanging Vitruvius’s terms for new ones, she wants to challenge his ideas about, perhaps most importantly, “beauty”, alongside his ideas about “usefulness’ ‘ and “solidity”.

Meet the Artist

How would you describe your artistic practice?

I’m based in Los Angeles, California. I’ve been there for almost about 10 years now. As you know, I came from architecture, just left that last year, so I’m in a big transition in my life. I would describe my practice as multidisciplinary.

I feel like I gather inspiration from a lot of different things. I have a focus in feminist art, past and contemporary. I like how much that changes or evolves and the different perspectives on it: what one work meant in that time and what it means now.

I have this parallel interest in materiality and spaces too, how can you be very tied to a place or just pass by. I get the most inspiration from just walking down the street, especially in a city landscape, from building facades or small things. For instance, I’ve noticed in Berlin, these funny stone mosaics that are specifically in Kreuzberg. So little details like that I would get stuck on, or I feel like it kind of weaves into my work or absorbs without me really knowing.

What inspires your work?

I usually like to read a book or a review before I start a residency, I feel like that’s really helpful, and I feel like once I’m at a residency, I just get going and I go for it. Before coming here, I was really into “Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art” , by Lauren Elkin, which speaks about criticism in feminist artworks, where she brings up a lot of interesting points that I’ve been thinking about in regards to how would feminist artwork look like if we didn’t need feminism. That was a big inspiration for the project I am doing here.

And also, I’ve been tackling in my work self-conscious things about what’s good feminism, what’s bad feminism. There was a little excerpt in that book that said something like it’s okay for artwork to be beautiful and it can say a lot more than that too, but I think if you’re looking at a classically beautiful body, then it’s easy to judge it. So I kind of just let down my guard in that sense and went for it.

How did your artistic journey begin?

I’ve been creative as long as I can remember from childhood, and then as I got older, maybe it was growing up on the East Coast in America or having maybe a slightly conservative family, that I started to look for more practical pathways, and so that’s how I got into architecture. I thought it would be a good midway point for me to use enough creativity to feed myself and then also be able to support myself. So I would say I’ve always been an artistic person, but now I’ve decided to take a big risk and put it all into my art practice.

Also, I had really good mentors in undergrad as well as grad school, they validated my creativity when I didn’t see it or believe in it. And I felt wacky, I guess you could say so they kind of gave me a lens which now I am able to see my work through.

How do you see yourself in the contemporary art world and in the art market? In the present and in the future.

I think my work definitely has a place in the world we’re living in now. I think it’s important for contemporary work to ask more questions than it answers because I feel like we need to question the status quo and frameworks that we’ve been living under for as long as the built environment has existed.

And that goes with politics, especially Roe v. Wade being overturned in America. These kinds of things are setting us back like 50 years are kind of crazy. Art has the ability to say things in a way that people in more activist positions cannot. I can’t not incorporate it in my work. I think art can open people’s eyes to things. At least for me art has the power of changing things, especially the work that I look at. It’s also inspiring to see women tackling the same problems that I’m interested in as well.

Does the city of Berlin and the residency in your artwork have an influence on your production?

I feel like this time has been incredibly productive for me, Berlin is such an energetic and playful place. It’s amazing to live in the same building with 13 other artists. Even coffees in the morning are about catching up on what we’re seeing, doing or what we’re working on. Yeah. It has been very invigorating for me.

Berlin and the residency are about freedom for me because I’m used to working a nine-to-five job and then trying to tackle my art practice on the side, which was really draining. So I’m just trying to make the most of this opportunity.

What are your plans after the residency?

I have to hurry back to L.A. for practical reasons, but who’s to say what the future holds in regards to where I’ll end up practising. Maybe I would want to go abroad again or live abroad if possible.

Statement

Tiffany Adler is an American artist practicing in Los Angeles, CA. Adler graduated with a Masters in Architecture in 2017. After graduating, she worked as a performing artist and model maker at Mike Kelley’s Kandors exhibit for 8 months at Hauser and Wirth, interpreting and constructing futuristic skyscrapers from Kelley’s imagined cities within the Superman comic book series. Adler practiced at several architecture firms thereafter, until deciding to leave the profession completely at the beginning of 2023, in pursuit of advancing her career as an artist.

Adler’s architectural background and interest in materiality informs her calibrated processes upon which her sculptures and contemporary narratives are derived from. Her interests lie both in the process of sculpture, as well as the conceptualization, fabrication, and construction of a scene, in service of communicating alternative narratives within classical frameworks of representation and architectural forms. In a woven effort, she seeks to interrogate and examine ever-evolving cultural ideas about feminism, gender dynamics, and human connection.

Her experience as a woman, in general, and in a profession that is still predominantly male led, informs her work symbolically through material manipulation, misbehaving formations of the body, and satirical narratives within the medium of film and photography. She often uses her own body as part of the narrative, and as a vehicle for communicating such ideas – a process by which is famously demonstrated in other female artists’ works, such as Cindy Sherman & Nadia Lee Cohen, to name just a few.

Her sculpture works also pivot off of classical and or architectural materials, often using plaster as the skin of the body, but foam at the core. A concept that is practically, functionally, and metaphorically suited to her artistic practice.

At this point in her career, she would like to use this focussed time at GlogauAIR to develop her own skill sets within the medium of photography and other, perhaps, post production, and other analogue processes, while still integrating her previous skill set, in hopes of finding a more integrated and holistic practice.

Tiffany Adler

GlogauAIR Project

What if Vitruvius was a Woman?

If we intuit that patriarchy starts at the foundation of the built environment, then Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Vitruvian Man may be worth reimagining. Literally drawn from the ancient figure, Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, best known for his ten volume work, De Architectura, a Roman writer and engineer, he set the foundation for future architectures with the leading principles being that of firmitas, utilitas, and venustas, in english, translating to solidity, usefulness, and beauty. His classical ideas have influenced young architects, myself included, at the foundation of architectural education.

I’d like to explore replacing Vitruvius’s original principles, juxtaposing them with possible new terms, and entertaining the idea of what might be if Vitruvian was a woman. With that in mind, I will be using Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, which represents the “perfect man”, based on the ancient knowledge of ratios and proportions present in human anatomy, as the point of departure. Da Vinci’s drawing depicts two superimposed positions of a man fitting within a square and a circle – a formal language that rules much of the built environment we exist and function in today.

By exchanging Vitruvius’s terms for new ones, I want to challenge his ideas about, perhaps most importantly, “beauty”, alongside his ideas about “usefulness” and “solidity”. Keeping the Vitruvian Man in mind, the focus of my exploration will therefore be that of juxtaposing an alternative and abstract representation through symbols, form, the body, and movement.

The re-envisioning of a well known representation here is a continuation of my earlier works, as seen in Fuck Your Pedestal, where the goal is to portray a feminine narrative in place of a well known male one. This process of juxtaposition therefore acts as research and experimentation, allowing for new perspectives to take the stage.

I look forward to seeing what inspiration Berlin has to offer me in my pursuit of the Vitruvian Woman project, as well as developing as an artist alongside the GlogauAIR community.

Performance, Photography, and Sculpture

CV Summary

Education

2014-2018 SCI-Arc, Los Angeles — Masters of Architecture
2011-2014 James Madison University, Harrisonburg — Bachelor of Fine Arts, Minor in Architectural Design

Exhibitions