Cybele Lyle is an Oakland-based artist whose installation, video and 2D work reconstructs the architecture and natural environment around her into an alternate vision of interior and exterior space. Cybele graduated from Oberlin College with a BA in Environmental Studies, then went on to get a BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts in Printmaking and an MFA in Painting/Combined Media from Hunter College in New York in 2007. She has held residencies at Ox-Bow, Project 387, Atlantic Center for the Arts, the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art and most recently at the Headlands Center for the Arts. Her works have been exhibited across the United States including at the 205 Hudson St Hunter Gallery, New York; Bemis Center, Omaha; Oakland Museum, San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; and Et al. gallery, San Francisco, among others. Cybele is a recipient of the Kala Fellowship, the Yozo Hamaguchi Printmaking award, and the Tony Smith Award. This coming spring she will be an artist in residence at Recology SF and will be participating in the California-Pacific Triennial at the Orange County Museum of Art. Cybele currently has a studio at Real Time and Space in Oakland and is represented by Et al. in San Francisco.
Artist’s Statement
Using various strategies of documentation, my work examines issues of identity and social representation by focusing the lens on myself and my community. I explore the connections between constructed space and constructed subjectivity through sculpture, photography, video and projection. The spaces I create –queer, safe, architectural and emotional – form a critically reconstructed mirror of reality, an alternative environment in which all forms of intimacy are allowed to be visible. I use social and visual material of my own life to represent spaces of transformative potential and desire.
Panhandler Magazine 