About the Project

Installation and public project

Re-configuring the use of space to create discursive temporary structures that people might momentarily inhabit and shape is the focus of this new series grouped under the working title "Possibilities for Use."

In this last year my work has taken me to Istanbul, Berlin, Bucharest and to New Mexico. "Possibilities for Use." is influenced in part by these travels, economies of scale and resources, and notions of portability. The initial version of the work was included in an exhibition "Unraveling Tradition" at 516 Arts, New Mexico this past summer.

The referents for this new work bring together seemingly unrelated histories and geographies. The hand-stitched banners of the early suffrage movement, which strategically shifted the gender-bound tradition of sewing from the domestic into the public sphere, suggested an initial methodology and scale for these works.

At 516 Arts the installation elements were installed off the wall but they could easily be placed on the floor, draped over an architectural armature, or remain rolled or folded. I'm interested in the transformation of architectural space for different purposes both social and performative. Working with materials that might divide space but with an openness and permeability that permanent structures resist. It is that potential mutability that underlies these new works, the moments between visual experience and spatial use that suggested a rethinking of modes of presentation in the gallery context.

In some ways, this new series is a return to thinking about the 'formal' through materials both sensual and industrial, each with it's own set of meanings. The individual pieces are a contradiction - artificial and natural, textiles of comfort and supplies of survival stitched together.

LOOP D-RISE

Public Project

Sponsored by 516 Arts and ABQ Ride, Albuquerque, New Mexico

exhibition history

Unraveling Tradition and LOOP: D-Ride, 2010, two exhibitions curated by Suzanne Sbarge at 516 Arts, Albuquerque, New Mexico. This project is sponsored by ABQ Ride.