Suzanne Broughel is a New York-based artist. Her work has been included in exhibitions at P.S.1/MOMA, Rush Arts Gallery, and Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, among others. In 2008, she was a participant at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She is a recipient of a 2009/2010 fellowship at A.I.R. Gallery in DUMBO, Brooklyn.

In my sculptures and installations, I sift through autobiography, history, and popular culture to explore the subject of race in America. I am particularly interested in examining whiteness – its dependence on an “other” and issues such as white skin privilege and white guilt. “Post-racial” is a current buzzword in our society, yet serious inequalities persist. I search out this complex narrative in the most prosaic of materials. 

My art materials are everyday household items – health and beauty aids, linens, etc. - things that we put on our skin, that we wear and sleep on. Though they are mass produced commodities, they enter a realm of intimacy as we use them in our homes and on our bodies. It is from this personal voice – from a vantage point of self and family - that I believe the strongest dialogue on race can begin. In my work, bandaids become a wall hanging and fake tan lotions become tie-dye patterns on white fabrics.

As I delve into more personal levels of meaning, I also touch on desire – sexual desire, cultural desire, desire for identity. In my ongoing Dreamcatcher Series, I construct makeshift hoops, nets and entangled traps that reference these overlapping areas of appropriation, fetishization, and cross cultural influence. I am interested in exploring how we are defined by cultural constructs, and how we, as a society and as individuals, may move beyond them.