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BIOGRAPHY

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   Leah Gossett is a Southern Appalachian artist that discusses her artistic practice within the intersectional relationship between labor, craft, and art. Gossett’s work is textile and mixed media sculpture and assemblage installations. She uses found fabrics, domestic wares, and farm tools to contextualize her struggle with both resenting and respecting traditional female labor roles. Most of the farm tools in her work came from her family farm in the Southern Appalachian Mountains.

   Gossett grew up farming and doing domestic labor which has led to her interest in the stereotypical gender roles that determine labor tasks. In the context of Gossett’s practice, labor is defined as physical, mental, and emotional strain put on a person. She often combines labor items that are typically coded as masculine and alters their use to describe circumstances that she has found herself in as a rural Southern woman. She creates decorative pieces with housewares that often coincide with the stereotype of southern women being seen as “domestic goddesses” that must stay within the realm of the home.

   Gossett speaks passionately about her call to make this work and how important it is that she can reach both the academic and non-academic worlds she finds herself existing in. The intersectional relationship between labor, craft, and art holds significance in the fine arts as well as Southern Appalachia and other rural areas by giving the women of this region with unheard voices a chance to speak about the realities, rather the stereotypes, dealt with in everyday life.

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