EXPO Chicago, Profile: Lauren dela Roche

EXPO CHICAGO will host the tenth edition of the in-person exposition on April 13—16, 2023 at Navy Pier. 

Using nude female figures as the central subjects of her work, Lauren dela Roche distorts, elongates, and duplicates the female body. Decorated interiors meld with exterior presences like wild animals, butterflies, and flowing rivers to create dream-like settings that explore balance and unease at once. Roche draws her influences from classical Greek mythology, handmade embroideries, domestic interiors, and her vivid dreamworld.

"I was obsessed with Kathy Acker as a teen. Reading her work felt like listening to someone describe a dream or delusion, and there is so much vulnerable yet fearless feminine energy in her stories. I used to skip school and go to the bookstore and just read for hours until it was time for my parents to pick me up. I started to draw feminine figures around this time, and I think I always tried to mimic that vulnerable yet unflinching energy in my figures." — Lauren dela Roche

Lauren dela Roche (b. 1983, Santa Rosa, CA) lives and works near St. Louis, MO. The artist received the 2019 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Fellowship and the 2012-13 Jerome Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship. Her work has been featured in exhibitions at Various Small Fires, Los Angeles, CA; Hair + Nails, Minneapolis, MN; Eritage Gallery, Lisbon, PT; and Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN. She participated in the 2021 Bed-Stuy Art Residency, Brooklyn, NY. Notable collections include the North Dakota Museum of Art and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.