‘Reality Artist’, Signe Pierce uses her body, the camera and her surroundings to produce films, performances and photographs, and with a singularly flashy, neon, Instagram aesthetic. Through her work, she posits questions regarding gender, identity, sexuality and reality within an increasingly digital world. Signe Pierce’s practice encompasses performance, video, photography, writing, and digital installations. She aligns and identifies with the notion of being a ‘Reality Artist’, a term Pierce acknowledges is at once enigmatic and paradoxical by nature, melding two highly subjective and contested concepts (Reality and Art). Pierce uses her body, the camera and her surroundings to produce films, performances, photographs and web-based works with a singularly flashy, neon, urban aesthetic. Through her work, she posits questions regarding gender, identity, sexuality and reality within an increasingly digital world. She starred in and was the co-creator of the highly acclaimed short film, American Reflex (dir. Alli Coates).

In 2015, her performance in the short film, American Reflexxx , was uploaded to YouTube; reaching over two million views within the first week of its online release. The 14-minute film features real, unscripted footage of Pierce walking down a frenetic Myrtle Beach boardwalk whilst wearing a mirrored mask and electric blue mini-dress. Her presence was met with a malevolent curiosity from the surrounding public, who quickly turned violent in an attempt to unmask and gender-identify her. The shocking displays of dehumanisation and mob mentality, along with the Pierce’s tenacious performance, garnered immediate critical acclaim for the film, as well as instant viral attention online.

While Reflexxx served as a proper introduction to Pierce’s conceptual oeuvre, her hyper-saturated photographs of Los Angeles palms and neon strip malls quickly developed a following of their own.

Signe Pierce was born in Arizona in 1988 and currently lives and works in New York. She received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2011. Pierce debuted at Annka Kultys Gallery in 2017 with Faux Realities, an exhibition of 30 photos that questioned the nature of truth and artifice within the digital image.

Her work has been shown at the MdbK, Leipzig in Germany, Düsseldorf Photo, in Germany, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, at the New Museum, New York, and at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.