“I come from show people,” the sculptor and installation artist Karon Davis said in an interview on Wednesday.
“The minute I was born, I was handed tap shoes, ballet shoes.” She’s only half joking: her mother, Nancy Bruner, was a ballerina; her sister, Naja, who died at the age of 16, was an aspiring ballerina; and her father is the Tony- and Emmy-award-winning actor, dancer and singer Ben Vereen.
That immersion inspired her recent exhibition, “Beauty Must Suffer,” which opened on Oct. 12 at Salon 94 in Manhattan.
On the second floor, plaster children practice at the barre, dancers rest, bow and stretch alongside floor-to-ceiling columns composed of pink tutus and piles of “dead” toe shoes.
(Until fairly recently, the major makers of ballet slippers didn’t produce a diverse range of colors.)
Persons:
Karon Davis, “, ” She’s, Nancy Bruner, Naja, Tony, Ben Vereen, they’re
Organizations:
barre
Locations:
Manhattan, Paris