Jaimie Warren Is A Total Character

How does an artist honor her heroes? Matching the playful “anything goes” aesthetic of its subject, this film explores the photographic and video work of Brooklyn-based artist Jaimie Warren as she recreates a wild array of pop culture characters. Coming of age in Wisconsin in the 1980s and 1990s, Warren learned to love the out-sized personalities and distinct looks of “weirdos” like Freddy Krueger, Miss Piggy, Grace Jones, Elvira, and Dolly Parton. Inspired by do-it-yourself Halloween costumes, Warren traces the evolution of her photographic work, from impromptu goofs to more elaborately art-directed portraits.

“Seeing what I’m capable of with the resources that I have, it’s just fun for me,” she explains. “I especially like the grosser or weirder it can be from me but—not just covering myself up with a costume—being able to see that it’s me but that I look completely different.” At the American Medium gallery in Brooklyn, Warren rehearses and shoots her latest work—a music video inspired by singer Freddie Mercury and a 14th-Century religious painting—with a group of friends and long-time collaborators.

For Warren, her celebrity-saturated works are not ironic pastiches but, instead, playful imaginings of an alternate universe where her motley group of idols can come together and interact in an unexpected community. Says Warren, “They’ve all helped along…my artistic spirit, and why should they not be friends? And why should I not thank them for that? So I am. Thank you.”

More information and creditsFeaturing photographs from the series Celebrites as Food & Food’lebrities and Totally Looks Like and video work from the exhibitions That’s What Friends Are For (2014), You Are Not Alone (2014), and Somebody to Love (2015). The painting St. Cosmas and St. Damian (ca. 1370–1375) by Master of the Rinuccini Chapel (Matteo di Pacino) is courtesy of the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh (Gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation).

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