Lois Bielefeld

From 2018-2020 I was actively working on the series “New Domesticity” digging into how home and our roles are thought about today while critiquing traditional modes of representation of the home through advertising, television, and movies and asserting less-representing stories into the photographic canon. The portraits are highly collaborative with my subjects that start with an in-depth audio interview and result in elaborate staged scene of my participants performing their domesticity for the camera.

I am a queer series-based artist working in photography, audio, video, and installation. My work continually asks the question of what links routine and ritual to the formation of identity, personhood, and the development of meaning-making. When I approach a project, a multitude of questions ping pong in my head as I ground myself into why and how we become us: how does the intermediate space of home and personal possessions and the meaning we place on them factor into daily identity and sense of self? What about the exterior space outside home--the larger culture, human systems, and material objects we encounter? What is the role of ritual, memory, and affect?

I decide what to examine and collect through this tributary of questioning. Via large serial works, I collect samples around a central idea. These central ideas have included home, identity, gender, queerness, domesticity, and labor. Humanness is messy and as humans, we have a need to understand and ascribe meaning to the havoc. This endless complexity is what I explore in my work- the why, who, what, when, where, and how of it all. In a way, I’m trying to create order while asserting a claim for difference.

Peter, Abigail, Eliza, and Eula. 2018

Susie, Forrest, Asa, and Laura. 2018

Sandra and Joey. 2019

Leo and Micheal. 2022

Chloe, Harper, and Stan. 2019

Alden and Alan. 2022

Barbara and Mya. 2022

Micheal and Joey. 2022

Clarity, Adena, Elias, Amber and Katie. 2018

Daniel. 2022

Peter, Abigail, Eliza, and Eula. 2018

Susie, Forrest, Asa, and Laura. 2018

Sandra and Joey. 2019

Leo and Micheal. 2022

Chloe, Harper, and Stan. 2019

Alden and Alan. 2022

Barbara and Mya. 2022

Micheal and Joey. 2022

Clarity, Adena, Elias, Amber and Katie. 2018

Daniel. 2022