Selected works from left to right, top to bottom:

“Baptism” - Installation, Performance, Solar Print, Linen, Sand
60" x 49", 2020, NFS | Paige Holzbauer

“Wildfire” - Hand cut dimensional collage on circular paper
8.5” diameter, 2021 $325 (framed) | Kirsten Francis

“Löcher” - Woodcut Oil-based Print
24" x 18", 2021, NFS | Kristina Rogers

“Baring Teeth (Parafictional Heraldry)” - restaurant napkins, embroidery, flag fringe, coyote jawbone fragment
19in x 21in, 2021, $300 | Leah Sandler

“Timeless” - Video, 00:48 seconds, looped
dimensions variable, 2020, edition of 5, $800 | Sarah Borruso

“Asena” -  Free machine sewing on paper and women's socks
25x35 cm, 2021, 1400 Euro / $1618 | Gizem Konyar

“dead lily”- Photography
12 x 12 , 2020, $400 | Catalina Aranguren

“Plastic Patrimony” -  Digital photo and digital collage
12x12", 2021, $400 | Jen McGowan

“Completing the Cycle--Freely Flowing”
H 55 x  W 18 x D 1 inches, 2021, $700 | Dia Bassett

ARTISTS STATEMENTS
Paige Holzbauer: Drawing from memories and changing identities, I investigate these deeply personal complex mental spaces through multiple perspectives on flat surfaces, revealing, marking, documenting, and archiving layers to the viewer so they are witnesses to the changes.

Baptism takes a fairly well-known ritual and turns it into a continuous moment of vulnerability. I give the viewer a close and intimate view of the moment when the spirit separates from the body and mind, leaving the moment of just being present. This piece is meant to disrupt the movements of the day to day, forcing you to sit and look. I let the viewer in on a moment of grief, pain, loss, and just being, knowing that that there is no resolution, just acceptance and submission to the process of change and healing and stepping into the role set before me.

Kirsten Francis Using mass-produced images cut from magazines and books, I make collages that explore the complex relationship between the human body and our physical environment. The compositions are built around paper coils made from sliced up landscape images and offer a counterpoint to the human and animal body parts entwined in them. 

These landscapes, both natural and manmade, are transformed into serpentine loops that wrap and fold around angular and disjointed body parts. The coils are infinite, echoing the repeating cycles of the natural world, and matching the physicality of the human body. Nature, often seen as a passive backdrop for humanity to act upon, becomes an equal and active element in my collages.

Kristina Rogers: This series of prints is meant to embody a three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface in order to prompt self-reflection and self-help through the human inability to enter the depicted spaces. Life is lived within the space we create inside our minds,  the mental spaces where parts of us die and parts of us are born over and over again through our lives. These prints are meant to depict an ideal mental space, one the viewer wants to be in, prompting them to ask, "what is in there that I don't have out here? What can I take from this space and live with now?"

Leah Sandler: Observing the decline of the Capitalocene from the sand pine scrub and urban sprawl of Orlando Florida, I construct parafictional worlds through mediums including video, text, drawing, flag making, and collaborative interdisciplinary projects. These parafictions flesh out imagined post-capitalist institutions, rituals, histories, manifestos, and landscapes. Traversing these worlds, the viewer is encouraged, through a visual language of repeated symbols and colors present throughout discrete works, to consider the inconsistencies of the invisible ideologies that uphold and subtend our current system, and to visualize the precarity of our contemporary moment.

Sarah Borruso: We are lifting, floating, drifting. We are here; we are there. We are present but reflect back and project forward. All happens simultaneously. These clouds are cyclical; they are ethereal, intangible. We cannot hold them, capture them — they drift on their own with their own intentions, directions. We are witnesses. They continue to float by long after we’ve looked away. They are the essence of continuation, longevity, cyclical nature itself.

In Timeless, I have replaced numbers with drifting clouds on an old clock, creating a window onto the sky where a flat, predictable system used to be. This video, one in a series, is an attempt to construct a new, alternate space — one that escapes the present and exists purely as an imagined realm.

Gizem Konyar: describes the rituals of humanity she observed from Anatolia, their lives and their lives. combined with fiber art. The difficulties faced by human beings in life, explores their efforts and daily rituals. people themselves differentiating in her works by imagining that she repeats and turns into patterns with the art of embroidery. She obtains variable textures by applying it to fabric surfaces. Free stitching technique on the front surface realizing the complex layout using the reverse effect, which consists of the reflection of the clean image on the background; it reflects on life.

Catalina Aranguren: Catalina Aranguren’s work is a dialogue about the modern world and our place in it. Light is the foundation and sets the tone of the conversation. Her work explores relationships between the learned and the subconscious. Because of the diversity of cultures in which she grew up, and perhaps in spite of them, her work explores the relationship between perception and cognition. Oftentimes in her work she captures an instant, which forces the viewer to come closer to explore for more detail, or to take a step back to understand the full picture. The idea of the “perceived” and the “actual” are rapidly shifting cultural concepts, though their ability to elicit reactions of fondness and fear remains a constant. As an artist she has the unique opportunity to exemplify, subvert, and redefine these concepts, adding her voice to a dialogue between the viewer and their history.

Jen McGowan: The digital collage, ‘Plastic Patrimony’ was created with a digital photograph of plastic food containers, and an image of a bride from a 1950s wedding gown advertisement. Each generation is born of the one before, and through this image I am questioning what I have inherited from the women in my family, and what I am passing down to the next generation of women - my daughter in particular. Other than having a nice ‘ring’ to it, the title implies that what we inherit is framed and informed by patriarchy. How we value ourselves, the choices we make in our lives inform how we try to belong and be loved within our society. We get these messages outside the home, but they are most strongly communicated through our immediate family. Often patriarchal values have been internalized and are being perpetuated through the messaging we receive from our mothers and grandmothers. I have been questioning the messages I received from my family and am trying to unpack the legacy I am leaving my daughter about how to be a woman. 

Sometimes it feels like the most concrete and lasting legacy I am leaving is the plastic I use. The plastic packaging I dispose of day to day will likely be what remains the longest. There is a similar sinister quality to the unexamined patterns of oppression we pass down to future generations. I find that now that I am in my mid 40s I am reflecting on what societal expectations led me to become a bride, and a mother. In each generation we ask, could there be a better way? What has held the women back in the generations before us, and how can we contribute to the emancipation of women in future generations?

Dia Bassett: This piece is a celebration of the return of my cycle after a 2-year and 9 month absence following my pregnancy and the birth of my daughter. As I reflect on my body and its connection both to nature and to the universal community of women, I feel it most fitting to reference a cycle in free-flow, without knickers, tampons, pads, or menstrual cups, so that it may complete the cycle with nature, in a parallel succession of birth, life, death, and rebirth. I began working on this piece shortly after my sister had a miscarriage, and completed it just before my daughter turned 3. Materials in this piece include: beads and jewelry collected throughout childhood, clothing remnants from my wardrobe, and artificial peonies from my wedding. Textiles—specifically clothing worn on the body—reconnect me to my experiences and memories in performance and theatre as well as my memories of daily living. Memories become materials which link the past with present and fantasy with reality. 

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Whitney LaMora is a queer curator, producer and performer from Chicago, IL. She is the Founder and Curator of  The Martin, an artist-first community space located in the West Town neighborhood of Chicago. She also curates The Robin, a mini-gallery within The Martin. She is the Founder and Curator of LOCUS, a quarterly gallery show that combines visual and literary artists in an anonymous pairing creative conversation. She otherwise loves to read, enjoys a cold gin martini and her pets & partner. 

Personal: whitneylamora.com / @wxlamora
The Martin: themartinchicago.com / @themartinchicago
LOCUS: locus.gallery / @locusgalleryshow