Dean, Danielle
Danielle Dean works with drawing, installation, performance and video. Born in Alabama to a British mother and a Nigerian-American father, and raised in a working-class suburb of London, Dean’s multinational background informs her practice. Her previous role as an art director at an advertising agency led her to consider how race, class and gender are constructed through targeted marketing strategies, a theme that recurs throughout her work.
KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN, version 2, 2018 is a suspended sculpture that takes the form of a child’s mobile. Constructed from Perspex and wire, it features a combination of marketing imagery. Baby products, such as nappies and lotion, hang alongside pest-control products used to kill flies and cockroaches. One set of the products is about taking care and maintaining life, while the other is about taking life. Using images that at first glance appear innocent or even funny, the piece investigates how these regimes of life and death are enforced through everyday consumer objects. It also considers the notion that, more sinisterly, advertising companies construct the very idea of what it is to be human.
KEEP OUT OF REACH OF CHILDREN, version 2 was commissioned for KNOCK KNOCK: Humour in Contemporary Art at South London Gallery, 2018.
- Artwork Details: 241 x 381 x 381cm
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- Material description: Print on Perspex and metal
- Credit line: © the artist. Image courtesy of the artist and Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles
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- Accession number: ACC34/2019