Veronica Ceci

Veronica Ceci’s work is an inquiry into tactile beauty and societal ugliness in the life of a Queer femme working as a maid. Cleaning, like art, uses tools and potions to change the perception of objects and surfaces. The artist manipulates tools used in the work of cleaning to remove their use value and transform them into objects worthy of careful consideration. In reducing the presence of the implements of cleaning to golden shapes, drawn lines and rectangular abstractions, the essential elements of functional design are presented with new context. As the figure interacts with these manipulated objects the matter of gendered hierarchical relationships to physical labor is exposed. The exaggeration of curves, deep color saturation, and use of reflective materials moves these formerly invisible connections into the realm of hypervisible. Invoking the precise repetition and stamina honed over decades as a Master Printer, Ceci reveals parallels between high art and what is mislabeled as unskilled labor

Veronica Ceci is a Queer intermedia artist based in Austin, TX. Ceci’s current body of work, Keeping House reconfigures the viewers’ relationship to the human element of institutional cleanliness by making undervalued labor conspicuous through intense materiality, repetition, iconography and lived performance.

Ceci’s pieces have been included in exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art,The Contemporary Art Center New Orleans, and the International Print Center New York. Her work is held in many collections including the Library of Congress, Zuckerman Museum of Art, The National Women’s History Museum, Manhattan Graphics Center and The Austin History Center. The artist received her BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, was certified at the Tamarind Institute of Lithography and completed her MFA at Kent State University. Ceci is the founder of the nonprofit organization, Flash Collective, which pays artists for their participation in community art making events and exhibitions.