Frances Wilks is an artist you want to know. With her powerful work and bright colors, the artist displays society’s current problems.
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Frances Wilks
With her exhibition “How to sell death to the living”, back in 2018, Frances Wilks addressed the current capitalist system, dominated by large multinationals, consumerism and over the top materialism. With his series, she raised questions like ‘why does a man’s success get measured by his car?’ With a background in graphic design and collaborations with big organizations such as Gucci and Maje, Wilks is one to watch.
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Wilks describes her creative process as “sporadic and impulsive”, implying her way of working to vary heavily from project to project. Since she’s a graphic designer, she got trained to be a problem solver. Hence, she uses her paintings to express her ideas on current society and the state of the world.
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Addressing societal issues
As a result, her paintings and other work reflect her thoughts. They are a means to show her ideas to the world. First she used to work solely from her computer, but at one day she was sick of it. That’s when she decided becoming an artist. She missed using her hands; therefore it felt like a logical step. Getting inspiration from literally everything, Wilks sometimes feels overwhelmed. When watching television, her head sometimes explodes from great ideas. Nonetheless, Wilks clusters her ideas into single art pieces and series.
When looking at her work, it becomes clear that red is one of her favorite colors. Red is dominant in the above mentioned “How to sell death to the living” series, confronting male dominance in folmula 1 while displaying herself. She replaced every man by a female counterpart, to challenge the image of the sports. Wilks uses the lack of women to question gender notions and to explore the possibilities of new standards.
Also read: Carlos Amorales and his fascination with copyright infringement of his own work
