Artist Amy O’Neill shared an inside look into her practice, which consists of everything from 16 mm video works to performances. “I always wanted to be an artist since I was young.” Still, today, childhood and the world around being a kid are significant and present in many of Amy O’Neill’s works. In the work THE ZOO REVOLUTION, O’Neill edited 16 mm film shots of abandoned so-called “storybook forests” with animated cartoons of animals escaping from zoos: “The idea for me with play… I think we’re all born with this ability to play really joyfully as children. That’s one of the great attributes of the human species.”
The series of drawings, ‘Vietnam or the American War’ (2015), depicts scenes from her father’s posting in the war in Vietnam. Her father gifted her Polaroids that he took during his time in the war, some of them showing her father and his friends engaging in play: “For example, they would take a piece of corrugated metal and transform it into a seesaw,” she says and continues: “There is this juxtaposition, in a sense, using play to cut the tension that they were experiencing while they were there.”
Not only is play an essential component in Amy O’Neill’s work, but collaborating is also integral: “I can’t believe anything is completely finished until the viewer completes it by interacting with it.” For her most reason show ‘This’s and That’s’ (2025) at Den Frie in Copenhagen, Denmark, O’Neill invited the viewers to finish the installation of her show: “I love the idea that they feel as implicated in it as I do,” she explains. “For me, the audience always completes the work. I really don’t want to see this art existing in a vacuum.”
Amy O’Neill began exhibiting in the late 1990s. While installation, drawing, and film can be considered her primary mediums, her most recent works have frequently included tailored looks. O’Neill works in New York and has had numerous solo exhibitions at institutions such as Doyers, New York; Paula Cooper Gallery, New York; MAMCO, Geneva; Swiss Institute, Paris and New York; Le Consortium, Dijon; and MoMA PS1, New York.
Amy O’Neill was interviewed by Roxanne Bagheshirin Lærkesen in February 2025 in connection to her solo exhibition ‘This’s and That’s’ at Den Frie in Copenhagen, Denmark. Camera: Rasmus Quistgaard, Produced and edited by Roxanne Bagheshirin LærkesenM Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2025. Louisiana Channel is supported by Den A.P. Møllerske Støttefond, Ny Carlsbergfondet, and C.L. Davids Fond og Samling
