Serena Cole: What It Feels Like For a Girl

Bay Area artist Serena Cole presents What It Feels Like For a Girl a body of work based on the appropriation and reconstruction of found imagery from fashion, art history, and current events.

Cole’s highly detailed mixed media artwork continues tropes from the history of painting such as the female figure and the still life. She uses these traditional formats as metaphors to examine what it feels like to be female living in America today.

Uncanny, forward-facing and often distraught expressions of her portraits give autonomy to the figures who can see the viewer seeing them. Still life flowers continue reflections upon expectations of beauty and explore profound and inevitable failure as the flowers droop and fade. Cole considers each piece an avatar of herself, creating a uniquely personal exhibition of self-portraiture that invites reflection from the broader audience on female-hood in the current political climate. 

Serena Cole received her Master of Fine Arts degree in 2011 from the California College of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited widely including exhibitions at Hinterconti in Hamburg, Germany; the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco; Soo Visual Arts Center in Minneapolis; and Phillips de Pury and Dodge Gallery in New York. Serena is represented by Gallery 16 in San Francisco.