Artwork by Cheryl Dun Screenprint on paper 50 x 40 cm Edition of 200 signed and numbered by the artist 2004
Published on the occasion of Beautiful Losers: Contemporary Art and Street Culture, 2004–2009
Cheryl Dunn’s Drafted captures the raw, lived-in energy that defines her photographic and film work—an unfiltered look at youth, rebellion, and vulnerability in urban America. Created for the landmark exhibition Beautiful Losers, this screenprint reflects Dunn’s signature approach: documentary aesthetics with a humanist eye.
A New Jersey native based in New York City, Dunn emerged in the 1980s as part of a generation of artists who embedded themselves within the very subcultures they chronicled. Her lens has followed skateboarders, punk musicians, graffiti writers, and outsiders living on the edge of convention—not from afar, but from within.
Drafted extends that ethos. Bold yet intimate, it evokes the tension between agency and pressure, identity and expectation. Like much of Dunn’s work, it balances the poetic and the political, the personal and the universal.
Known for her contributions to publications like Dazed & Confused, Spin, and Vogue, and for her acclaimed documentary films screened worldwide, Cheryl Dunn continues to offer a moving, street-level portrait of contemporary life.
