Cameron Patricia Downey

Cameron Patricia Downey (1998, Minneapolis, Minnesota) graduated from Columbia University in 2021 with a double concentration in visual art and environmental science and is currently a first-year MFA candidate in sculpture at the Yale School of Art. They were the 2023 recipient of the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation’s MN Art Prize and are a recent artist in residence with the Walker Art Center’s Moving Image department, Juxtaposition Arts, Loghaven Artist Residency and Second Shift Studio Space of Saint Paul. “I am deeply interested in the processes and elements through which we choose to adorn and care for ourselves” the artist observes. Cameron Patricia Downey is an anti-disciplinary artist whose work oscillates between sculpture, photography, film, body, curation and otherwise. Peering into the private lives of objects, seeing instruction in the incidental, the precarious and the misremembered, Downey’s work strives to archive, unfurl, make-altar-of and lend fantasy to the Blues of Black life and relation. Through various forms of sculpture, the artist explores how the meaning of an object can transform or gain momentum through its repetition, drawing inspiration from the rhythm of the blues. A central theme in her work is the intimate respect and empathy Downey holds for objects. Through elevation, multiplication and placement of them at the center of attention, she investigate what happens when these objects, once meant to serve us, are freed from their functions.