Rachel Lee Hovnanian

Rachel Lee Hovnanian
Born1959 (age 66–67)
Parkersburg, West Virginia, US
Occupationartist
Websiterachelleehovnanian.com

Rachel Lee Hovnanian (born 1959) is an American artist whose work has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale and the Baltimore Museum of Art. She focuses on themes of digital addiction and the pursuit of beauty and perfection.

Career

Hovnanian completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the University of Texas at Austin in 1982.[1][2] She then did postgraduate studies at Parsons School of Design.[1][3]

She moved to New York City shortly after graduating from art school.[4][5] She worked as an art director for McCann-Erickson, a New York ad agency.[6][7]

One of her first art shows was at the David Beitzel Gallery,[8] a 2001 series of paintings titled Isolation Beauty.[9] In 2007, Hovnanian exhibited at the Jason McCoy gallery.[10] In 2009 she debuted Fun House Changing Room, a funhouse distortion mirror alongside swimsuits and an audio recording criticizing the viewer's body;[11] this was exhibited at the 2011 Art Platform Art Fair in Los Angeles.[12] Also in 2009 was her exhibition Power and Burden of Beauty at Jason McCoy, Inc.,[13] which included "Beauty Queen Totem", an 11-foot (3.4 m) marble sculpture;[14] it was also presented at a group show at Parasol Unit.[15] Hovnanian's 2010 show Too Good to be True also addressed the theme of beauty pageants;[16][17] it was presented at the Cat Street Gallery in Hong Kong,[18] Collette Blanchard in New York,[19] and Aina Nowack/AAC Gallery in Madrid, among others.[20]

Her 2012 exhibition Mud Pie included a Southern café which served dishes inspired by the mud pies of Hovnanian's childhood, delivered by an actress playing a waitress.[19][21][22] She followed this in 2014 with New Year's Feast at the Joyce Gallery in Beijing, China.[23] In 2014, her exhibition Plastic Perfect was held at the Leila Heller Gallery; its "Perfect Baby Showroom" of lifelike dolls that viewers were encouraged to cradle.[24] She took the exhibition to a show at the Perchersky Gallery in Moscow,[4] and reprised the Perfect Baby Showroom for the 2016 Dallas Art Fair.[25][26]

This was followed by the 2018 three-part Women's Trilogy Project:[27] according to Alessandra Codinha (writing in Vogue), "the first time in recent memory that a single artist will have three sequential exhibitions in a New York gallery".[13] The first part of the trilogy, NDD Immersion Room, "requir[ed] visitors to surrender their phones and spend time alone in a reproduction of a crepuscular forest".[27][28] The second part of the trilogy, Happy Hour, showed imagery of Girl Scouts and debutantes alongside Hovnanian's family photographs.[29][13] The third part, PURE, had dozens of oversized bars of Ivory soap carved in marble.[30]

In 2019, she had an exhibition, Open Secrets, at the Palazzo di Seravezza in Italy. This was the museum's first solo exhibition by a woman or an American.[31] Also in 2019, she created a mobile exhibit called Fuck My Life, My Battery is Dead out of a Piaggio Ape truck. She exhibited Dinner for Two in a church in Lucca, Italy, in 2020, and again in Pisa in 2021.[32][33]

For the 59th Venice Biennale, she created the exhibition Angels Listening: seven angels cast in bronze with their mouths taped shut.[34] She was described as the first Texas artist to participate in the Biennale since 1964.[3] As part of the exhibition, viewers were invited to "write something they couldn't say or didn't say"; Hovnanian compiled those messages into a 2024 exhibition, You Are Not Alone, Angels Listening, in Pietrasanta, and published them as a book.[35] She was also part of a group exhibition of women sculptors, The Divine Feminine, at the Ann Norton Sculpture Garden.[35]

Her 2024 exhibition Beyond the Hedges at Brintz + County featured large-scale oil paintings and mixed-media collages.[35] The same year she was included in the mobile exhibition Body Freedom for Every(Body)[8] and created the sculpture Poor Teddy in Repose,[8][36] a 4.5 metres (15 ft) bronze teddy bear with a knife through its chest.[1]

In spring 2026, Hovnanian's Nature Deficit Disorder was exhibited at the Baltimore Museum of Art.[37][38] Press coverage included the New York Times.[39][40][41][42]

Personal life

Rachel Robertson Lee[7] was born in Parkersburg, West Virginia, in 1959.[1][36] Her mother, Peg Lee, was a cooking school teacher and later director; her father, Edwy Lee, was a writer and professor of English.[43] She was one of five children, with four brothers (one of whom drowned at age 2).[44] After stints living in New York City and on an Ohio farm,[44] the family moved to Houston in 1969.[43]

Hovnanian is dyslexic and struggled with reading,[45] but "art came very naturally to her".[46][1] Her parents both painted and took her to visit abstract expressionists of their acquaintance.[4] A Girl Scout,[8] she was nicknamed "Ray Lee" because of her "stereotypically masculine" interests, like fishing and camping.[29][47] She was taught to bake by her mother,[43] who forbade her to have popular processed foods[4] or to play with Barbie dolls.[3] Her childhood was also impacted by her father's alcoholism[31][27] and violence.[13]

She married Ara K. Hovnanian in Dallas, Texas, on February 23, 1985.[7] Ara was the son of Kevork Hovnanian of real estate company Hovnanian Enterprises.[48] They had sons Alton and Alexander and daughter Serena.[49][50] The family lived near Red Bank, New Jersey.[50] Alton was killed in 2002, aged 15, in a boating accident.[49]

In 2019, she and her husband moved to Miami, Florida.[46] She initially worked in Wynwood, but in 2023 moved to a studio in Miami Beach.[51] Hovnanian also has studios in New York City and Pietrasanta, Italy.[1]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Antonella Gramigna (May 8, 2025). "Rachel Lee Hovnanian: The artist and Teddy Bear the teaching bear". The Gram Journal.
  2. ↑ "Rachel Lee Hovnanian". Artnet. Retrieved December 1, 2025.
  3. 1 2 3 Amber Elliott (September 2, 2022). "Houston-raised artist Rachel Lee Hovnanian creates waves at Venice Biennale 2022". Houston Chronicle.
  4. 1 2 3 4 Dorothy Spears (November 6, 2014). "Interview: Rachel Lee Hovnanian". Bomb.
  5. ↑ Julie Belcove. "Rachel Lee Hovnanian's art is probing and provocative - just don't call it pretty". 1st Dibs. Retrieved December 2, 2025.
  6. ↑ Michael Kaplan (October 23, 1988). "Hey Bubba, where's the party?". Houston Post. p. 182.
  7. 1 2 3 "Rachel Lee is married to Ara K. Hovnanian". New York Times. February 24, 1985.
  8. 1 2 3 4 Cristina Macaya (March 26, 2025). "How Do Artists Place Work in Their Own Homes? Rachel Lee Hovnanian Offers Her Guide". Cultured.
  9. ↑ "Art Guide". New York Times. July 20, 2001.
  10. ↑ Bill Cunningham (November 11, 2007). "Evening Hours: Bookish or Not". New York Times.
  11. ↑ Tracey Lomrantz Lester (October 28, 2009). "What Do You Hear When You Step into the Dressing Room?". Glamour.
  12. ↑ Alessandra Codinha (September 29, 2011). "Rachel Hovnanian's Savage Beauty". WWD.
  13. 1 2 3 4 Alessandra Codinha (April 18, 2018). "In 'The Women's Trilogy Project', reckoning with addiction (and appearances) through art". Vogue.
  14. ↑ Katy Donaghue (August 7, 2019). "Rachel Lee Hovnanian's 'Open Secrets' at Palazzo Mediceo". Whitewall.
  15. ↑ Sophie Risner. "July 2009, Parades and Processions @ Parasol unit". WhiteHot Magazine. Retrieved February 1, 2026.
  16. ↑ Maura Egan (May 26, 2010). "Welcome to the dollhouse". New York Times.
  17. ↑ "Rachel Lee Hovnanian's Secrets". Sculpture Magazine. August 9, 2019.
  18. ↑ Carol De Coene (March 26, 2012). "Rachel Hovnanian's 'Too Good to be True' art show in Hong Kong". Haute Living.
  19. 1 2 Sasha Herman (June 1, 2012). "Rachel Lee Hovnanian serves up 'mud pie' at Leila Heller Gallery". Observer.
  20. ↑ Barbara Barker (September 29, 2010). "Rachel Hovnanian's 'American Beauty' show opens in Madrid". WWD.
  21. ↑ Alessandra Codinha (April 30, 2012). "Rachel Lee Hovnanian: Narcissus in an iPad". WWD.
  22. ↑ Shana Nys Dambrot (October 2, 2012). "10 Great Artworks at Art Platform Los Angeles Art Fair". LA Weekly.
  23. ↑ Kathleen McLaughlin (January 17, 2014). "Rachel Hovnanian takes conceptual piece to China". WWD.
  24. ↑ Alanna Martinez (December 2014). "Rachel Lee Hovnanian". Modern Painters. 26 (11): 86.
  25. ↑ Steph Eckhardt (April 16, 2016). "At the Dallas Art Fair, everything's for sale, including babies". W.
  26. ↑ Bethany Radcliff (March 23, 2016). "The Bio-Engineered Future of Perfect Baby Showroom Comes to the Dallas Art Fair". D.
  27. 1 2 3 Daniel Kunitz (April 19, 2018). "Rachel Lee Hovnanian's Women's Trilogy Project Arrives at Leila Heller". Cultured.
  28. ↑ "9 art events to attend in New York City this week". ARTnews. February 20, 2018.
  29. 1 2 Scarlett Davis (May 4, 2018). "Rachel Lee Hovnanian: The Women's Trilogy Project". Musée.
  30. ↑ Scarlett Davis (June 14, 2018). "Exhibition review: PURE". Musée.
  31. 1 2 Luisa Zargani (July 19, 2019). "Rachel Lee Hovnanian stages first solo museum exhibit in Italy". WWD.
  32. ↑ "So Far So Close: Conceptual Artist Rachel Lee Hovnanian Takes on the Ubiquity of the Screen". Cultured. August 27, 2020.
  33. ↑ Raphy Sarkissian (September 2022). "Rachel Lee Hovnanian: Angels Listening". Brooklyn Rail.
  34. ↑ Caitlin McClain (March 6, 2023). "Innovative art, a moment with 'Angels Listening' by Rachel Lee Hovnanian". Love Happens.
  35. 1 2 3 Whitney Scott (March 6, 2024). "Rachel Lee Hovnanian discusses her new Palm Beach show". Palmer.
  36. 1 2 Noemi Capoccia (August 4, 2025). "'My art? It's a wake-up call.' Interview with artist Rachel Lee Hovnanian". Finestre sull'Arte.
  37. ↑ "Rachel Hovnanian: Nature Deficit Disorder". Baltimore Museum of Art. Retrieved February 10, 2026.
  38. ↑ "Around Town: Baltimore Museum of Art shows off new exhibits". CBS News. Retrieved 2026-04-06.
  39. ↑ Malget, Morgan (2026-04-15). "What to See This Spring at Museums Across the Country". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2026-04-22.
  40. ↑ Case, Wesley (2026-05-11). "This BMA exhibit comes with a radical challenge: Give up your phone for 5 minutes". The Banner. Retrieved 2026-07-02.
  41. ↑ "Around Town: Baltimore Museum of Art shows off new exhibits". www.cbsnews.com. Retrieved 2026-07-02.
  42. ↑ "Rachel Lee Hovnanian by Kevin Tervala and Katie Cooke". Bomb Magazine. Retrieved 2026-07-02.
  43. 1 2 3 Greg Morago (April 26, 2021). "Recipe for Success honors Houston food legend Peg Lee". Houston Chronicle.
  44. 1 2 Bao Ong (February 28, 2024). "Peg Lee, Houston's Julia Child who taught generations of locals how to cook, dies at 90". Houston Chronicle.
  45. ↑ Kristen Tauer (April 20, 2018). "Rachel Lee Hovnanian unveils second exhibit of the Women's Trilogy Project". WWD.
  46. 1 2 Kristina Webb (March 14, 2024). "Artist Hovnanian peers 'Beyond the Hedges' in County Gallery show". Palm Beach Daily News. pp. A1, A15.
  47. ↑ Bob Morris (March 22, 2018). "Nature with chirps, but no tweets". New York Times.
  48. ↑ Barry Meier (September 25, 2009). "Kevork S. Hovnanian, Construction Company Founder, Dies at 86". New York Times.
  49. 1 2 Samuel Nitze (July 18, 2002). "Family details boating tragedy". Asbury Park Press. pp. 1, 5.
  50. 1 2 Lisa Jackson (May 10, 2007). "Closer: Rider on the Storm". Builder.
  51. ↑ Erin Michelle Newberg (September 15, 2025). "Behind the Hedges". Lifestyles South Florida.
This page is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.