Genesis Belanger (born 1978 in the USA) stages psychologically charged mise-en-scènes composed of idiosyncratic versions of everyday objects. Working in a multitude of handcrafts—welder, ceramicist, and seamstress—Belanger conjures installations of unresolved tension on the edge of a temporal collapse. Her vocabulary is lifted from the 1950s, specifically from the dawn of American advertising, and she infuses her tableaux with a sense of lobotomized capitalist productivity, choosing liminal spaces, such hotel lobbies or office waiting rooms, as subject-matter. In Belanger's practice, the body is absent, inviting the viewer to enter as purposeful actor. In her immersive scenes, objects become surrogate for the female body: pursed lips emerge from matching stoneware lamps, fingers sprout from a bouquet, and a hot dog wiggles itself into a wedge heel. Belanger's three-dimensional work, although situated within the legacy of Claes Oldenburg and Robert Gober, is principally concerned with the manifestation of capitalist myths on a gendered psyche. In 2021, Genesis Belanger was the subject of a solo exhibition at the
Consortium in Dijon, France. In 2020, the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, in Ridgefield, Connecticut dedicated a solo exhibition to her work. In 2019, Belanger created an installation in the New Museum's Storefront Window, New York.
