Cherie Dre
Cooley Gallery - immersive installation
Cherie Dre was presented at The Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Art Gallery, Reed College, as an immersive installation September 9th-October 9th 2016. Yanow transformed the gallery into an environmental stage set - a psychological, social, and physical landscape - blurring the lines between history and present, fantasy and reality, metaphor and simulacra. In the gallery was a stage with projection from a grand ballroom where Cherie made her first live appearance; collected and fabricated personal family ephemera mixed with archival Catskill hotel promotional materials; a Bronx bedroom scene from the 1950s replete with vintage furniture; a large scale constructed fantastical white bird wing; and a tremendously large pile of oyster shells. Omnipresent throughout the space is an audio recording that weaves together an interview with Yanow's great aunt, Barry Sisters songs, found recordings, Yanow's own singing, and her performing a trial scene in the style of HUAC hearings from the 1950s