Rachel Yurkovich

July 2-30, 2016

Rachel Yurkovich, still from Egg Eating Chicken (04.24,2014), 2014, video

Rachel Yurkovich

Yurkovich screens videos that depict uninhibited consumption and the damaging consequences it brings. She uses insects, birds, and plants as stand-ins for human desires, indulgence, and self-destruction. Some of her videos are based on pre-existing phenomena, such as the fact that chickens enjoy the taste of their eggs and that praying mantises eat each other after mating. Yurkovich recreates these situations and documents them in her videos, which serve as allegories for the modern struggle to monitor appetites and avoid overindulgence.

Yurkovich works with living things as the primary medium for her work. She was born in South Carolina then moved with her family to live in Macedonia and later the Czech Republic. Returning to the United States, she received her BFA in Sculpture and Painting from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2014. Her work has been exhibited in venues such as SPACES Gallery in Cleveland, OH, the Paul Robeson Gallery in Newark, NJ, and the Sebastopol Center for the Arts in Sebastopol, CA.