Upson's first museum exhibition following her untimely death shows the range of an artist already well on her way to becoming a modern classic
At her untimely death from cancer in 2021 at the age of 51, Kaari Upson (1970-2021) was widely regarded as one of the most significant and versatile American artists of her generation with a practice spanning sculpture, drawing, performance, film and painting. Though her career was cut short, she left behind a rich, intense and strongly personal body of work that revolves around identity, body, sex, relationships, memory, illness and loss. Published on the occasion of the Louisiana's retrospective exhibition, the catalogue comprises the Los Angeles-based artist's most important works: from her dollhouses to
The Larry Project
, where she conducted something close to a criminological "investigation" of a person who once lived across from her childhood home in San Bernardino, California; her
Mother's Legs
tree trunk installation and her never-before-shown large series of "foot face" drawings that she made just before she died.