Cameron Mankin

Cameron Mankin makes prints, artist’s books, and sculptural installations that investigate the role of reason and rhetoric in the arrangement of public space and personal identity. Working primarily from found archives (news site banner images, apartment floor plans, and grainy security camera footage), he employs traditional print and bookmaking techniques to approach delicate systemic problems with a tongue-in-cheek rigor. The material properties of paper and ink set measurements and catalogs to collapse under their own unwieldy weight. The resulting projects vibrate between love letter and biting rebuttal – both addressed to vernacular image-making that goes unquestioned in our day to day lives.

Mankin received his BA in Studio Art (Printmaking) from the University of Virginia in 2016 and his MFA from the University of Chicago in 2020. He currently lives in Chicago, IL, where he teaches in the Media Arts and Design program at the University of Chicago.

Website:

www.cameronmankin.com/

Residency Period:

Mar 2022–Apr 2022

Project Statement:

In 1633, printmaker Jacques Callot made his Miseries of War - a series of 18 etchings depicting the invasion of his home, Lorraine, that would go on to inspire the works of artists like Francisco Goya and Otto Dix. At the same time, he was developing an incredibly rigid system of etching, preserved in Abraham Bosse’s Manual of Etching. In Covid after Callot, my goal is to produce a series of copper etchings, applying Callot’s etching system to news images circulating today - using the precursor thought-technology of Callot’s work as an archeological tool through which to examine the system of design that informs today’s imagery.