Constance Thalken

Constance Thalken joined the School of Art and Design Photography faculty in 1990. She received a BA in Psychology from Barat College and a MFA in Photography from Yale University.

Thalken's work has been featured in over 100 exhibitions in galleries and museums in the U.S., Mexico, France, Greece and Brazil. Venues include the San Diego Art Institute (CA), the New Orleans Museum of Art (LA), The Light Factory (NC), Municipal Cultural Center of Ioannia (Greece), the Huntsville Museum of Art (AL), the Harn Museum of Art (FL), the Foundation Charles-Leopold Mayer (France), The Atlanta Contemporary Art Center (GA), the House of Culture (Brazil), the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (GA), the Photographic Center Northwest (WA), and the Torpedo Factory (VA).

Her work is in the permanent collections of The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, The Birmingham Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, The Bunnen Collection, Georgia Perimeter College, Yale University Library and other private collections. She has received numerous grants and awards for her work, including individual artist grants from Georgia Council for the Arts and DeKalb Council for the Arts, a Hambidge Center Residency Fellowship and many research grants from Georgia State University.

The overarching concerns of Thalken's work are the complexity of loss and issues of mortality. In her most recent work, entitled Eyes Open Slowly, Thalken employs the prism of taxidermy to investigate the entangled relationship between human and animal. The work explores animal essence and the emotional and psychological complications that arise from reanimations of that essence. Her previous 1.2cm = project speaks to concerns of mortality in relation to cancer and the medical world. The work examines the nature of disease and our unease with it, and the tension between the body as a physical medical object and as an abstract vessel of the human spirit.