match/book (strike)

Isabella Losskarn

MEET THE ARTIST

Isabella Losskarn is an emerging visual artist currently based in Asheville, North Carolina. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Drawing, as well as a Bachelor of Art History in December 2021 from the University of North Carolina at Asheville. 

Born in 1999, in Charlotte, North Carolina, Losskarn grew up in a way that was synchronous with technological and societal change. Coming of age in the early 2000’s, she has experienced firsthand how the portrayal of gender stereotypes in mass media and popular culture can influence one’s own perception of gender. Confused by a lack of honest dialogue and unequal representations of gender in the media, at home, and at school, as a teenager Losskarn became motivated to use art as a way to communicate an understanding of the impacts of gendered experiences to broad audiences. 

Working exclusively from artist-captured reference photographs, she collects and spends time with each of the objects seen in her drawings before they are placed in a composition and photographed. Rooted heavily in the regular study of gender-based research, the artist’s studio practice pulls from personal and anonymous gendered experiences in an effort to address a specific absurdity— the circumstances and consequences of the overwhelming presence of gendered stereotypes, ideas and imagery in our daily life. 

ABOUT THE WORK

Match/Book (Strike) is a sculptural poetry “book” which examines the marketing and consumption of gender, sexuality, and identity within pop culture and the household. The viewer is invited, with kind words, to gently abrade each match in the same manner by which gendered experiences abrade us all. 

This book is made of gesso-treated cardboard, wood, wax, a partial binder clip, and paint.

Abrade Me,
a product of the household,
so that I may be

discarded.

To explore more fascinating works by Isabella visit her Instagram and her website.

This unique work is priced at $170 at Downtown Books & News.