Topher Lineberry

Topher Lineberry

Topher Lineberry

Topher Lineberry (b. 1990, Greensboro, NC) is an artist who is promiscuous in form and method. Their work mediates research, experience, ethics, and desire. Lineberry has shown work at galleries and museums across the country, and presented academic research at colleges, universities, and archives. They received a Bachelors of Fine Arts from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Lineberry is a Masters of Fine Arts candidate at Hunter College in New York City.

Kinstitution: Between Archive and Proposal

2021 Sculptural installation Dimensions variable

Topher Lineberry is a multidisciplinary artist whose work often uses historical and archival material in conjunction with speculative proposals. Lineberry’s work fuses prequel and sequel into a queer space of becoming. Most recently, this mode of working has taken a sculptural turn, creating a miniature world of architectural models and maquettes which flirt with, refuse, and talk back to art historical categories forcefully grafted onto the American South such as “outsider art,” “folk art,” and handicrafts. These flat free-standing images were traced and altered from drawings by the artist’s grandmother, Helen Lineberry, who drew them in 1929 as a 10 year-old in the Appalachian Mountains. Using family and kin as a platform of investigation, Topher Lineberry advances a project they term “kinstitutional critique” into a site of critical “kinstitution building.”

Bizarro-Girl Recites Selections About Being Radical or Something They Read or Heard Once (A Response to Mike Kelley) / Towards a Benevolent Absence

2020 - Ongoing In-Progress Video Stills of Digital Sculpture and Environment featuring Martha Graham’s “Appalachian Spring” placed in a structure based on Argo City, Supergirl’s home. Dimensions and length variable

Hunter MFA

This spring, the Hunter College MFA Program in Studio Art will graduate 26 artists who completed their degree over the challenging months of the COVID-19 pandemic. These talented MFA Thesis Candidates are exhibiting their work in six group exhibitions at 205 Hudson, in addition to this online spotlight hosted by Hauser & Wirth. At time when the public audience for in-person exhibitions has been limited by the pandemic, we are excited to provide this digital platform to the emerging artists from Hunter College’s MFA Program in Studio Art.

Images: Portrait of Anthony Cudahy. Photo: Néstor Daniel Pérez-Moliére; Topher Lineberry, Kinstitution: Between Archive and Proposal, 2021. Photo: Néstor Daniel Pérez-Moliére; Topher Lineberry, Kinstitution: Between Archive and Proposal (detail), 2021. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Topher Lineberry; Topher Lineberry, Kinstitution: Between Archive and Proposal (detail), 2021. Photo: Tim Laun; Studio image; Topher Lineberry, Bizarro-Girl Recites Selections About Being Radical or Something They Read or Heard Once (A Response to Mike Kelley) / Towards a Benevolent Absence, 2020-Ongoing. Courtesy the artist. Photo: Topher Lineberry