Shiny Brutal Meat - Coorain Devin
Practice Gallery is pleased to present Shiny Brutal Meat, an exhibition of new work by Coorain Devin. Patchwork banners and collages will be on display from:
July 10 - August 7, 2026, with receptions for the artist on:
First Friday, July 10th from 6-9 PM
and
First Friday August 7th from 6-9 PM
Coorain’s screenprints and photographs were printed on silk and cotton, and patchworked together with vinyl, and found fabrics to make banners.
Artist statement:
Everyday, a flooded zone. Things are built and things are burnt. I am delighted and I am horrified by my consumer choices. Nuance is lost and image is reality.
I tried to make sense of the textures of that image reality.
I took all of the textures that this moment is made of. I combined and ordered them to understand what is really happening in American culture. It’s so brutal and pretty and ugly and literally the most beautiful and terrible thing I can think of, but it’s all to much to even think of, a country, a culture, a government, a power beyond my comprehension. I can’t keep track of it all, but this is my best attempt.
The textures our moment is made of:
Plastic
Camouflage
Influencers
Hot dogs
Vinyl (perfect skin)
Heaven, paradise, clear skies and golden light
Digital print, pixels
Fake cheese
Burn, baby, burn (that oil, that world), flames
Warhol’s Marilyn Kardashian Monroe Boop
Discount bin, sales
Sterile, clean surfaces
Homemade blankets (plastic yarn)
Pesticides
Crispy golden fried
Photographic evidence
Shiny, shiny trinkets
Data augmented
Meat
Reality TV lighting
Hidden Fees
Silky polyester
Enhanced
Artist Bio:
I’m so curious about the world and its surfaces — there are so many spectacular glossy surfaces, on objects, on people, and all available for a great price! I love to look at food and discount bins and celebrity personalities and plastic packaging. It all seems so frivolous, but with a little inspection, it turns out everything is available on the surface of our material culture.
As an interdisciplinary artist, I make performances, photographs, and objects, often textiles, that discuss the joys and horrors of consumer culture. I look at the media messages around us, just really look at them. As consumers, we’re never given tools or literacy to deal with this strange world we live in. Sometimes, I attempt to make good on the promises of the American Dream and corporate advertising, other times I point to this culture’s decadent excesses. I frequently take on the role of the domestic goddess, infomercial host, and other demonstrative consumers in my work. These personas are notable in that they turn what has historically been a trap (consumerism and domestic labor) into a powerful stage.
As a stand-in for the commodity in general, I use food to ask tough questions about things I deeply love. My own food related illness makes this comforting, life giving substance a source of great pain. I live in a world of apparent delections, with delightful and extravagant foods that my great-grandparents could never have imagined, but these exist just out of reach; my body can handle few of the pleasures of the American industrial food system. What promises us the good life is exactly that which is killing us.
Born in Australia, Coorain studied at Georgia State University, earning an MFA in Photography, and Tufts University and the School of Museum of Fine Arts, receiving a BA in Philosophy and a BFA in Fine Arts respectively.
website: http://www.coorain.com/
