Danica Phelps

Danica Phelps was born in 1971 in New York. Since 1996 she has been documenting all of her income and expenses through drawings in a system that becomes increasingly layered and complex. In this system, each drawing is a depiction of a daily activity and documentation of a financial transaction, and each dollar is represented by a single stripe of watercolor: green for income, red for expense and grey for credit. The result is a huge personal diary, even if speaking of results is hard. First because the work is always in process, and second because the work in itself is almost not a work in itself but a tracing, a document of pieces of everyday life.

The work of Phelps gathers conceptual precedents not only by taking in account economy as a main theme of her work but also in the practice of the data capture, the exhaustiveness, and in the record of the facts, that have been a main feature of conceptual art.

Phelps has participated in the Whitney Triennale and the Vienna Biennale in 2015. Solo- and group shows includes the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn (2004); New Museum Of Contemporary Art, New York (2003); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro (2017); Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago (2008); Fundación La Caixa, Barcelona (2000); Museum Moderner Kunst (mumok), Vienna (2010); Museum Folkwang, Essen (2012) and Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston (2007).

Her works are part of the collections of Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York; Whitney Museum, New York; Arkansas Arts Center, Arkansas; Colecção Madeira; Daimler Art Collection; Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The West Collection, Oaks; Magasin III Museum for Contemporary Art, Stockholm; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle; University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque; Wien Museum, Vienna; Yale Art Museum Collection, New Haven; Fundación La Caixa, Barcelona and Tang Teaching Museum, New York.