DNR Project Grant 2025: Genevieve Goffman
Do Not Research is proud to award the 2025 Project Grant to Genevieve Goffman.
Genevieve Goffman (b. Washington D.C.) is a New York-based artist. She graduated from Yale with an MFA in Sculpture in 2020. Her first book The Triumph of a Lonely Place was published in 2024 by Inpatient Press and her installation The View, derived from Goffman’s research into Adolf Loos, was exhibited in 2023 at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria.
All the words that came down to meet the body that came up from the ground, presented jointly by Alyssa Davis Gallery and Foreign & Domestic is Goffman’s most ambitious exhibition to date.
Foreign & Domestic
24 Rutgers St, New York, NY, 10002
Open Wednesday-Sunday 12-6pm
April 11, 2025 – May 18, 2025
“Is it wrong to form with words something that cannot speak?
Terribly wrong, but this is the order of things
As it comes down from heaven—
All 600 letters, alphabetically.”—Genevieve Goffman, All the Words that Came Down (2025)
The golem stands over seven feet tall, iridescent and immobile. Its surface finish is a gleaming hand-made paint of K-500 medium, Cekol, and Iriodin 9605 Blue-Shade Silver SW. The golem does not move. Its mouth does not open — actually it’s crammed with pages repeating, “He can not call out to anyone with his mouth stuffed full of paper,” as if silencing it with its own rhetoric. Its chest bears the Hebrew word for truth — אמת (Emet) — but the aleph has been struck through, rendering it just מת (Met), meaning dead, like a silent monument to the historical lore that shapes it and the present in which it is situated.
Across centuries the golem has been rewritten to suit the fears of its storytellers — first a mystic experiment, then a household assistant, eventually a holy bodyguard tasked with assuming the worst parts of the world. By the early 20th century, it had morphed into a kind of spiritual security system: a passive threat in an increasingly hostile Europe. Its evolution mirrors a shift in how we wield stories, from creation myth to trauma script. Goffman’s golem is not merely an ominous totem to the tragedy of the past, but a prism for understanding the violent ideologies that define our present. She asks what it means to shape identity through a creature whose entire purpose is to absorb threat, to embody it, to preempt it, and eventually to justify it. The golem does not judge. It reverberates with distorted echoes of history, while absorbing the stories of now into the ever-expanding archive that defines its shape.
In both book and body, Goffman composes a creature that is not so much alive as endlessly spoken into being. It is an object made of fear, born of language, but unable to speak for itself. In its monumental stillness, the golem becomes a reflection not only of collective memory, but of our compulsion to author fear into flesh. If stories are how we inherit meaning, then the golem is our most paradoxical heir. Whether you see a protector, a corpse, a glitch in the system, the result is a figure that resists closure, defined not by what it is, but by what we need it to be.
—text by Madeline Cash (2025)
DNR Project Grants support ambitious projects, with significant offline costs, that address internet culture and society in the 21st century.
The 2025 grant is an award of $1,500. Project Grants are distributed once a year on a per project basis. Do Not Research is a subscriber funded arts organization. Every week we highlight the work of an emerging or established creative in the fields of writing, visual art, internet culture and beyond. Each year we produce an anthology book of the collected works published to our site. You can help to support our future projects:
Annual DNR Project Grants assist artists and creatives with larger scale works that may be financially burdensome or difficult to realize on their own. This award is given to past contributors, organizers and educators who have helped to build the context and community of Do Not Research.
Meet the awardee:
Conversation with Harris Rosenblum, Filip Kostic, Genevieve Goffman, and Almog Cohen-Kashi at SARA'S
Genevieve Goffman (b. Washington D.C.) is a New York-based artist. She graduated from Yale with an MFA in Sculpture in 2020. Her first book The Triumph of a Lonely Place was published in 2024 by Inpatient Press and her installation The View, derived from Goffman’s research into Adolf Loos, was exhibited in 2023 at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna, Austria.
Goffman's recent solo exhibitions include The Triumph Of A Lonely Place, Espace Maurice, Montreal (2024); Before It all Went Wrong, Hyacinth Gallery, New York (2022); Grind, Money Gallery, Saint Petersburg, Russia (2021); Here Forever, Alyssa Davis Gallery, New York (2020).
Goffman has participated in group exhibitions with Petzel Gallery, New York (2024, curated by Simon Denny); Hagiwara Projects, Tokyo (2024, curated by Kai Yoda); Blade Study, New York (2024); Eyes Never Sleep, New York (2024); CANADA, New York (2023); Thierry Goldberg, New York (2023); Fragment Gallery, New York (2022); Real Pain, Los Angeles (2021); Workroom.Daipyat, Voronezh, Russia (2020); Patara Gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia (2020); EXILE, Vienna, Austria (2019). Goffman also exhibited at NADA x Foreland in 2021 and NADA Warsaw in 2024 with Alyssa Davis Gallery. Goffman exhibited in AFTER LIVES, a group exhibition at Foreign & Domestic in 2023, alongside work by Lee Brozgol, Gryphon Rue, and Bob Smith.
Artist Statement
My sculptures blend the past and the present with a world of my creation. I sculpt narrative objects that explore stories caught in the midst of history— pivotal moments of social, scientific, and ideological change. I subvert machine fabrication to construct sculptures where architectural models flow seamlessly into surreal neoclassical tableaus. Renaissance narrative paintings are reimagined with socialist-realist figures infused with the spirit of fantasy tabletop games. Through non-traditional mediums I bring to fruition sculptures whose form and materiality challenges the viewers to consider our ideologically driven understanding of history and the narratives we use to define our identities.
My materials and methods are deeply intertwined with my creative journey, reflecting my struggle to overcome a physical disability. By collaborating closely with fabrication specialists and focusing on 3D printing, I strive to transcend my physical limitations to create bold, thoughtful, and compelling work. I have pushed the boundaries of 3D printing techniques challenging viewers’ perceptions of what is technologically possible. Each piece embodies a balance between conceptual depth and technical mastery.
I juxtapose the monumental with the miniature, modernist with obsessively intricate decorative details and contemporary materials and methods with classical romance. I have refined a distinct aesthetic where plastic, resin and nylon transmogrify into ethereal, dream-like objects. My sculptures harness technological production and hyper-contemporary materials to create an alloy of joyful wonder and fantastical narrative while seriously reflecting how our contemporary ideologies shape our understanding of history and our dreams for the future.
Bibliography