The Day Sondra Bird Was Born, The Cicada Sang, performed by Vicki Fowler photo: Ryan Bach |
Christina Cosio's Sticky Rice photo: Ryan Bach |
I Leave You In Good Hands, folding warm sheets with Rebecca Parker. photo: Ryan Bach |
With apartment galleries a perpetual hot topic in the city, it’s interesting to note that Fowler’s home functioned as one, going by the name Mutherland coincidentally, from 2007-2009. Although oftentimes apartment galleries end up mimicking the white cube of commercial galleries or contemporary art spaces, there was no such pretense here. It was interesting to experience an exhibition so deeply and unapologetically enmeshed within a domestic dwelling that also featured work that depicted or engaged with issues surrounding domesticity, the role of the
Kelli Connel's My Head Under Her Shirt hung over the sleeping baby's crib. photo: Ryan Bach |
Admittedly, some of the works on view were alienating in their specificity, while others blended so well with the pre-existing stuff of living that guides periodically leaned in to explain a piece we’d just walked by. Overall, the project’s premise was an extremely earnest one, and a profoundly intimate gesture of creative generosity. Left the House illustrated that you don’t have to miss much by being homebound if — as Fowler did — you bring the outside in.
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Thea Liberty Nichols is a curator and writer from Chicago.
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