“Discordant Structure” | East Atrium
2024-26, Premium Archival Matte prints with matte laminate, 40 in x 53 in (series of 5)
“Discordant Structure,” located in the east atrium, just past Charity Hamidullah’s mural, is an installation of five (5) large-scale photographs of a cheer team at night. The formation is deliberately rearranged into an unfamiliar structure that isolates the performances of individual young athletes. The work draws attention to the bottom row, young women whose strength and endurance sustain the group, by recasting them as the heroes of the image. By refusing to replicate the pyramid with accuracy, the installation exposes the labor and vulnerability that underlie such performances, contradicting the idea that cheerleading is not a serious sport.
Jill Frank
Atlanta, GA
Jill Frank is an Atlanta-based artist and educator. She is currently an Associate Professor of Photography at Georgia State University. Frank received an Artadia Award in 2021, and reviews of her work have appeared in Art Forum, Art in America and The Paris Review. She has had solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art Georgia. She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA studio art) and Bard College (BA Photography).
Frank works primarily in photography and video to explore the ideologies and aesthetics that shape teenage life, her large-scale photographs and sound/video installations reveal the struggle to present one’s identity within unstable environmental, political and social contexts. Diverging from traditional photographic documentary forms, Frank uses sound, scale, repetition and staging to record conquests and games, where representation plays a decisive and transformative role.
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