Megan Laura Brooks
They/Them
Atlanta, GA, USA
Megan Brooks is a sculpture artist living and working in Atlanta, GA. They received their Bachelors in Fine Arts in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University. They completed a fine metals assistantship at Peters Valley School of Craft and have attended residencies at the Hambidge Center and Elf School of the Arts. They have exhibited work at the South River Art Studios, Empire Arts Gallery, the Bakery Atlanta, the Anderson Gallery, the Peters Valley Gallery, and the Jenkins Fine Arts Center. Brooks approaches their work through a grotesquely feminine, melodramatic persona, creating work centered on the domestic and foods of the American South. Drawing on elements of kitsch and horror, they unite the work in a hyperreal, queer world.
“As the maker, I create within a persona. She is the heightened, ultra-queer version of myself that revels in melodrama, hyper femininity, and the abject. Fixating on domestic imagery and food from an upbringing in the American South, she tenderly crafts objects reflecting a subversive personal narrative in their peculiar relationship to the self. Existing at a deliciously intimate scale to the body, the objects are deceptively functional and rife with desire. Kitsch, flamboyance, and exaggeration shamelessly impose themselves onto forms and color. Through interventions of flamboyance, I am recontextualizing the objects in a hyperreal, queer world of her making.”
@nutmeghamm
"Monstress, in becoming", Ceramic, sterling silver, smoky quartz, paint, 6.75in x 5in x 3in, 2025, Megan Brooks
How does your work relate to the theme of flourish(ing)?
"When I think of her, I think of hunger", Brass, powder coated copper, maraschino cherries, peach pit, pearl, nails, string, my mother's earring, string of beads, matches, ribbon, costume jewelry, 22in x 9in x .5in, 2024, Megan Brooks “I find myself fixating on objects of adornment because they directly reflect our sense of self through their proximity to the body. The persona I inhabit allows me to tap into her peculiar logic system where what is beautiful and strange is tenderly crafted into the objects that surround her. Object by object, she is piecing together a lush, ultra-queer world, one that is erotic and visceral. Flamboyant lines, heart motifs, and bodily forms reoccur in celebratory excess. I find queerness in this by reveling in what is at once appealing and unappealing–what forgoes prototypical boundaries of an attractive object. The recurring motif of the heart form draws on the kitsch symbol but also on the shape as it naturally occurs in food, the bodily, and fauna. By pushing the shape away from its most common depiction, it is married with the grotesque and othered, and yet still recognizable as a symbol of love. The expansive associations celebrate what is complicated and bizarre: all things are true at once. “
Sticky, sweetly (dessert spoon), Pewter, 6in x 1.5in x .20in, 2022, Megan Brooks How does your creative practice allow you to flourish (grow, thrive, blossom)?
“I treat my art practice as an ongoing research process, full of discovery and play. Within that practice, I learn about myself, my identity, and my relationship to the world. My connection to art is heavily sensory based and emotive; my art practice provides a place to indulge in these sensibilities. The persona plays off of an intuitive logic system that reveals my complicated relationship to gender and queerness unconstrained from convention. My work exists interconnected with itself. Each piece has a vast relationship to other works that expands as I continue to make work. Treating my art practice as ever evolving makes it a nourishing practice for me where curiosity and excitement is prioritized. “
As a queer+ artist, what would you like to see and/or what do you need in order to flourish during this time?
“In this time where many things feel unsteady and uncertain–especially as a queer person living in the American South–I find making and supporting unabashedly queer art to be crucial. I think there’s something compelling about creating art specifically for a queer audience without sanitizing it for wider appeal. In doing this, there is also potential to build community and optimism because there is a deeper point of connection. Showing queer art can be an act of rebellion and defiance but also an act of celebration.”
Anything else you would like to share about this work? This can be an important part of the process, sourcing materials, or research.
“When I think of her, I think of hunger contains real maraschino cherries which are stabbed onto the hooks and will shrivel as the exhibition goes on. By imposing real maraschino cherries into this collection of items, the attractive red cherries become sickly and grotesque in their delectable sweetness; one can imagine them dripping, feeling the stickiness on their body. The collection of items in the mobile weaves an ambiguous narrative that twists around itself.
Sticky, sweetly (dessert spoon) is a delicate ordinary object that is made extravagant and flamboyant through its form and usage. At once, it resembles kitsch hearts and the more bodily associations of bones and veins. The spoon has an inherent sensuality through a direct relationship to the mouth and the textural qualities of sticky, sweet desserts. The act of creating this spoon with such a lavish specialized purpose is one of personal joy.
Monstress, in becoming is a work in progress. The stone settings will be fixed into the eyes of the face and protrude outwards. The face sculpture will be painted with an airbrush in tones of glossy red with highlights of pink. The red adds melodrama and intensity to the bodily textures and transformation occurring on the surface of the skin. It is ornamental but also treads upon body horror–the abjection of becoming something unknown.”
[queerphoria]v4 @ ECU Symposium