Coco Allred is a visual artist and teaching artist currently
based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Allred graduated from the BFA program at
Carnegie Mellon University with a concentration in Sculpture, Installation, and
Site-Specific Work and minor in Human Computer Interaction. She works a range of media
including sculpture, printmaking, and collaborative public projects. Allred’s
work has been included in several group shows at the Pittsburgh Center
for the Arts, Bellevue Art Museum, Kennedy Center, Frame Gallery, and the NEPO
5K Art Walk. She
was
a Work Trade Residency at A-Z West in Joshua Tree, CA and has been a recipient of the VSA
Emerging Young Artists Program, Frank-Ratchye Fund for Art at the Frontier Grants from the
Studio for Creative Inquiry, C.G. Douglas “Wrong-Way” Corrigan Travel
Fellowship, and a YoungArts Finalist in Visual Arts.
In her practice, Coco mimics objects, imagery, and human behavior used to shape perception about how a space operates; the kinds of people with in it, and their purpose for being there. Coco works primarily in two ways; creating sculptures with absurd functionality that sit in contrast to the expectations of the designs they mimic and producing speculative artifacts to suggest alternative social interactions. Inspiring these works, she uses site specific and archival material to mimic and critique the ambitions of the object to speak to a particular individual. Examples of how she’s worked with source material include an installation of an office that centers around a 9-5 durational kinetic sculpture satirizing a phony productivity study to perform like the top 10% of workers and setting up public napping stations. Coco has built works for specific individuals using various methods such as interviewing my mother, observing a shy dog, and extrapolating quotes from modernist icons into fictitious routine-based objects. Office furniture, productivity hacks, and motivational language are some of the subjects Coco has deconstructed to understand how material culture and professionalized processes reflect how time and labor are valued and signified.
In her practice, Coco mimics objects, imagery, and human behavior used to shape perception about how a space operates; the kinds of people with in it, and their purpose for being there. Coco works primarily in two ways; creating sculptures with absurd functionality that sit in contrast to the expectations of the designs they mimic and producing speculative artifacts to suggest alternative social interactions. Inspiring these works, she uses site specific and archival material to mimic and critique the ambitions of the object to speak to a particular individual. Examples of how she’s worked with source material include an installation of an office that centers around a 9-5 durational kinetic sculpture satirizing a phony productivity study to perform like the top 10% of workers and setting up public napping stations. Coco has built works for specific individuals using various methods such as interviewing my mother, observing a shy dog, and extrapolating quotes from modernist icons into fictitious routine-based objects. Office furniture, productivity hacks, and motivational language are some of the subjects Coco has deconstructed to understand how material culture and professionalized processes reflect how time and labor are valued and signified.