Isabelle Frances McGuire: Year Zero

Explore Isabelle Frances McGuire’s uncanny worlds, where cultural archetypes—from presidents to vampires—are reimagined through sculpture, installation, video, and performance, tangling with American history and the loops of contemporary culture.   Across a growing body of work, artist Isabelle Frances McGuire engages with figures that loom large in the cultural imagination, exploring the stories they generate and giving them new, uncanny life. Their Renaissance Society exhibition Year Zero brought together figures ranging from a U.S. President to vampires and the Hollywood ingénue, weaving personal biography, political lore, and popular culture. The exhibition centered on revisiting and transforming familiar archetypes, testing the looping repetitions of contemporary culture, and infusing these figures with a feral energy that surprises and challenges expectations. This publication offers a multi-faceted view of McGuire’s exhibition and greater insights into their inventive practice, highlighting how the artist reimagines cultural symbols and narratives. McGuire merges a hands-on sculptural sensibility with digital techniques, including 3D printing and milling controlled by computer, producing installations, sculptures, props, videos, and performances. The book presents these strategies and approaches as a lens through which readers can encounter the inventiveness and playful experimentation that define their work. In two essays, the volume provides insights into different aspects of McGuire’s practice. Max Hart examines the role of play and surprise in her work, while Karsten Lund, curator of Year Zero, situates the exhibition within a broader trajectory of artists engaging with cultural codes. Complementing these essays is a reprint of George Saunders’ short story "CivilWarLand in Bad Decline," a satirical take on the American habit of historical re-creation and the violence that shadows it.