Lara Salmon uses her body as the primary instrument to coalesce and transform the materiality of a specific environ including herself, the subject in question. Her performances sustain a careful, risky balance of bold formalism and ephemeral experimentation. From her performative acts, Salmon manifests raw materials with which to birth further iterations. Her presentation of millennial feminism connotes conditions of individuality and semi-androgyny. Photographs are pre-meditatively cut, sewn and hung as substances on her body, measurably identifiable but elusive in meaning.
Salmon’s humanitarian involvement in the Middle East has developed into projects uniting art with refugee aid. In 2013, in collaboration with her mother, artist Niki Salmon, Lara produced No Vacancy, an art show to raise awareness and funds for Syrian refugees. Her evolving projects with refugee aid organizations continues, taking the form of such manifestations as the act of reutilizing hookah smoke into forty beach balls; a bathing performance in 255 cans of Diet Coke; a mud spa made of Starbucks Soy Latte and sand collected from a Syrian Refugee Camp in Amman, Jordan; an audience participation in message-writing on Salmon’s body for the refugees—‘Pride and dignity were her clothes.’ Through her body Salmon continues to amplify the ambiguous and aestheticized use of culturally charged materials. More info at www.larasalmon.net.
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