AMY CANNESTRA
ARTIST STATEMENT
The voice in my head is relentless, pointing out the flaws in my body and actions. My work interrogates the performative nature of everyday life and the toll that maintaining acceptable levels of happiness takes on mental health. As a conceptual artist, I use found objects and personal experience to visualize the push and pull between self-care and societal demands.
While my work stems from a personal narrative, it builds on the long history of artists using the body as a site for critique and emotional suppression, challenging societal expectations of womxn in art and life. By confronting the tension between public image and private struggle, I seek to break the cycle of suppression and reclaim the narrative around emotional expression. Through performance, material manipulation, and intimate self-exploration, I invite viewers to question their own relationship with vulnerability and the pressure to conform, carving out space for authenticity and embracing the messy, imperfect process of being human in a world that demands perfection.
BIOGRAPHY
Amy Cannestra is a Milwaukee-based conceptual and multimedia artist whose work examines the performative nature of everyday life and the emotional labor of maintaining composure. Through performance, sculpture, video, and installation, she explores themes of self-criticism, emotional suppression, and the tension between internal turmoil and outward control—often centering the body as both subject and site of pressure.
Cannestra received her BFA in Communication Design from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design in 2006 and her MFA in Studio Art from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2015. Since completing her MFA, she has exhibited and performed nationally and internationally, including the TransArt Triennial in Germany (2016), a ChaShaMa pop-up at One World Trade Center in New York City, the TRIO: Trio-Biennial in Rio de Janeiro (2017), and the 58th Venice Biennial in the Grenada Pavilion.
In 2024, she presented two solo exhibitions—I Must Be Missing Something at Bliss Gallery in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and The Body Problem at the Trout Museum of Art in Appleton, Wisconsin—and has two additional solo exhibitions scheduled for 2026. Alongside her studio practice, Cannestra runs Task Creative, a DIY studio and project space in Cudahy, Wisconsin, dedicated to supporting experimentation, conceptual development, and community among emerging artists.