Jessica Manafort, 2018, single-channel video. 18min
Jessica Manafort combines appropriated footage, stolen text messages and essayistic narration to explore the relationship between Paul Manafort and his eldest daughter, Jessica. As Donald Trump’s campaign manager from June – August 2016, Paul Manafort was recently convicted on eight counts of financial crimes and lying to the federal government. Jessica Manafort is a filmmaker. In 2007, she wrote and directed her first feature-length film, a teen drama called “Remember the Daze”. According to reports, Paul Manafort invested millions in its production. In Jessica Manafort, Brewer reimagines “Remember the Daze” as a film about money laundering and the economic realities that govern creative expression. The teen coming-of-age story is rewritten to reveal the financial transaction at its heart: the transfer of money from father to daughter.
Maura Brewer’s work in video, performance and experimental fashion design explores the construction of female subjects in mass culture. Her video essays combine footage from Hollywood films, television and Internet subcultures to question the ways that popular culture mimes the language of feminism in the service of patriarchal capitalism. Brewer was a Whitney Independent Study Program fellow from 2014-2015, and received her MFA from the University of California, Irvine in 2011. Her projects, videos and performances have been shown at MoMA, New York; MCA, Chicago, MUMOK, Vienna and the Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève. Her work has been the subject of recent solo projects at the University of California, Irvine; Art in General, New York; and Queens, Los Angeles. She is a 2017 California Community Foundation Fellow, and a 2016 and 2018 Creative Economic Development Fund grantee. Brewer is a founding member of the Rational Dress Society, a counter-fashion collective, and the Arts Research Cooperative, an experimental art school. She lives and works in Los Angeles.
www.maurabrewer.com
www.artsresearchcooperative.com
www.jumpsu.it