Interdisciplinary artist exploring perception, mental illness, and inherited trauma through installation, video, and text.

Lauren Be Dear is an interdisciplinary artist based in Hartford working across installation, video, textile, sound, and performance.

Her practice examines perception, mental illness, family systems, and inherited trauma through immersive environments that explore how identity is shaped by what is revealed, obscured, and carried across generations. Rooted in radical vulnerability, her work transforms lived experience into systems of layering, repetition, fragmentation, and controlled revelation.

Often drawing from personal and familial archives, she creates works that externalize internal states - using language, material, and interaction as mechanisms for confronting stigma and reconfiguring memory.

In 2023, she received the Emerging Recognition Award through the Artistic Fellowship Program from the Connecticut Office of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited at Real Art Ways, TheaterWorks Hartford, and CT State Community College Manchester.

She currently works as Membership Coordinator at Real Art Ways and Co-Curator at The Arts Industry.

Selected Exhibitions

2025, Group Exhibition, FALSE CITY, Artspace, Hartford, CT

2025, Group Exhibition, Homesick, Hans Weiss Newspace Gallery, CT State Community College Manchester, Manchester, CT

2024, Group Exhibition, Academy Hall Video Club, West Suffield Academy Hall, West Suffield, CT

2023, Solo Exhibition, infinitlovalie, The Arts Industry, West Hartford, CT

2021, Solo Exhibition, Through The Veil, Real Wall, Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT

Awards

2023, Emerging Recognition Award, Artistic Fellowship Program, Connecticut Office of the Arts, Hartford, CT

Roles / Affiliations

2023-present, Membership Coordinator, Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT

2024-present, Co-Curator, The Arts Industry, West Hartford, CT