Horse of Oblivion #8

About the Photographer

Bool, Shannon

Canadian, b. 1972

Shannon Bool’s series Bombshell considers where female bodies fit into the narratives of Modernism and Modernist architecture. Specifically investigating the works Le Corbusier, Bool creates photographs based on erotic drawings the architect created while he was in Algiers dreaming up his Plan Obus for the city. Using photograms as her medium, Bool overlays the images of nude women onto Le Corbusier’s architectural drawings to show bodies entangled with roads, the built form tracing the organic. The works confront orientalist tropes in art history and patterns of exoticizing women in art, while revealing what might be suppressed behind the legacies of famous practitioners.