Lauren R. O’Connell on Deb Sokolow

SMoCA staff members each chose an artwork from our collection exhibition Unapologetic: All Women, All Year to highlight. Assistant Curator, Lauren O’Connell, selected Deb Sokolow’s work You tell people that you’re working really hard on things these days (2010) to focus on and had this to say about her work:

“Deb Sokolow’s You tell people that you’re working really hard on things these days is a massive five panel, 25 foot long artwork that explores the artist’s observations and inner thoughts about suspicious activities in and around her studio in Chicago. In this drawing, painting, and collage, Sokolow unfolds a series of possible conspiracy theories involving fictional and real characters. Although the work was made in 2010 (pre-COVID-19), “You tell people […]” resonates in our current moment where we are all doing our part by staying home and social distancing. As we continue to shelter in place with family or alone, one might start to develop their own observations about their limited surroundings and interactions.”

About Deb Sokolow

Deb Sokolow is a Chicago-based artist and writer whose text-driven, diagrammatic drawings and artist books blend fact with fiction and speculate both comically and critically on a variety of topics, including architecture, the details of shadowy histories, the foibles of heads of state, organizational brainwashing, and the lives of geniuses.

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