Mary Reid Kelley

Reid Kelley makes surreal spoken-word videos and related works on paper that draw on historical themes and artistic styles, especially German Expressionism and Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity, which emerged in Germany in the 1920s in response to the horrors of World War I. She works exclusively in black and white, combining live video with stop motion animation. Her characters, all of whom she plays, include the one seen here, a wartime nurse from the video The Queen's English (2008), who covers her patients with words rather than blankets.