Danielle Dean: Out of this World

Drawing from archival records and materials like film and advertising, British-American artist Danielle Dean produces bold environments to ground and enliven her research-based projects. Her multidisciplinary practice examines historical representations and contemporary conditions of labour, racialized identity, and popular culture through projects that are often produced collaboratively with community members whose experiences bring crucial perspective to the work.

Commissioned for her solo exhibition Out of this World, Dean’s new film is a portrait of Hemel Hempstead, where she was raised and unfolds as a personal essay on the town’s history as a planned community under the New Towns Act of 1946. Titled Hemel, the work’s central reference is a 1957 sci-fi horror B-movie shot in town about the arrival of a non-human entity that infiltrates the minds of residents and endangers life with a toxic black slime. Playing a composite character based on herself and the movie’s detective protagonist, Dean’s extraordinary vantage brings together real and imagined worlds, both past and present.