This is where we start: Suspension, softness, and shared weight in SooVAC’s 19th 'Untitled' show

Banner image: Untitled 19, installation detail. Photo by Cory Eull.

 

What does it look like to fill a room with art made at a jarringly pivotal point in history? What does it look like to take a snapshot of this place in time? And what does it sound like to pause long enough to hear the careworn voices around us? For Soo Visual Arts Center’s Untitled 19, Keisha Williams, director and curator of galleries and exhibitions at MCAD, served as guest juror. In response to the open call, 231 applications were submitted, of which Williams selected 31. Slowly, methodically, she formed a collective vision. 

Williams reviewed applications in late December, and remarked on themes she saw arising at that time. “It was a moment of down time and quiet contemplation but also this very visceral awareness that a lot of things were about to change — politically, community wise, in our spaces,” she says. “And what I sensed was needed at that moment was connection, and a focus on our human selves, and honestly a chance to breathe and take a breath. I think we all collectively have been holding our breaths for a really long time, and feeling that tightness in our chests. And so this group of works that I selected really shows commonalities, shared themes, and overlapping narrative. But I think ultimately, these artists embrace little moments of intimacy that show our human nature, in many different ways, but how interconnected we all are, and that was really important for me.”

Starting to walk through the gallery, I did feel a heaviness and a weightiness, like something caught in the throat and chest. A preexisting sensation and feeling in me for sure, and perhaps one I projected onto the exhibition. But it’s possible the union of what was curated with Untitled 19 situated that pressure just so, and that that load was felt by peering into something intimate, human, and relational — that recognizable, innermost sameness between viewer and artist, where we remember that the same things keep us up at night, or wake us in the morning. To remember what is shared in this lived experience — and to lessen the weight you feel by acknowledging it is carried collectively — can provide for a powerful moment of reassurance.

 

Top, foreground: Arnée Martin, You cannot kill us in a way that matters. Bottom: Dean Ebbe, When Spring Came The Tulips Died And We Baked Bread. Photos by Cory Eull.

 

Arnée Martin’s piece You cannot kill us in a way that matters, one of the first works you see in the show, is a large cross stitch piece. “It speaks to this moment of resilience but also community care,” says Williams. This piece is a grounding point in the exhibition, and the potency of the words paired with the medium of cross stitch manifests as resistance and defiance — but not without softness. In the piece by Dean Ebben, When Spring Came The Tulips Died And We Baked Bread, black leggy flowers are sewn atop a heavily worn and faded quilt. While going through submissions over and over again, Williams kept coming back to this piece, concluding, “I think this is where I start.” These two works really grounded Williams in what the show was becoming. The title of Ebben’s piece provides its own impression of the work, speaking to seasonality, change, and persistence, all planted atop this wearied quilt that’s lived at least one other life before this one.

Slip Seat by Perci Chester is another piece that struck a chord. This antique, paint-flaked wooden chair dangles in mid-air, held aloft by one point on a long-handled brick hod, a box meant for carrying brick or mortar. It’s another nod in the room towards weight and burden. Williams recalls, “During the opening Chester moved it a little bit and it was swinging, and it's so interesting to see it still versus activated. But also the precarity of this suspended chair in space.” 

 

Center: Perci Chester, Slip Seat. Photo by Cory Eull.

 

The relationships formed between pieces in this show make evident the thoughtful placement of each work. “I had a lot of help from Carolyn Payne and Alison Hiltner at SooVAC to do the final layout, to find those little moments that could connect it,” Williams says. “I think there's an intuitive part of curating, and once you've worked in a space for so long, you really know how to make the work sing.”

There is a complementary suspension to both Cartridge by Sarah Abdel-Jelil and Strand 05 by Amy Usdin, together inducing a pause before rounding the corner. The corners created by the gallery’s wall placement become a place for shadows and stray thought to gather and bunch at the edges. These rooms encourage a partitioning of imagery and response, slowing the viewer down on their journey through the exhibition’s work, perhaps noticing for an extra moment the relationship between Ashley Mary’s To float on lightness and Dan Tran’s Propagation of Poetic Sensibility over Rational Uncertainty — how certain elements are emboldened with this pairing, the shapes and lines hung between the two, and the dancing silhouette that speaks to both from the adjacent wall.

 

Left: Amy Usdin, Strand 05. Right: Sarah Abdel-Jelil, Cartridge. Photo by Cory Eull.

 

A remarkable amount of textile-based work is in this show. To that Williams says, “We needed a moment of softness in this show.” Being drawn to the medium herself, she notes, “a range in mediums was important to me to showcase this diversity of artistic practices, that these ideas of human connection and intimacy could be shown across mediums in different ways, but all still have these overarching connections.”

The diversity of work in this show and the sheer amount of submissions received highlights, for Williams, “the importance of the Twin Cities arts scene, because some people describe Minnesota as this flyover state and I really disagree with that narrative. While we might not have the same recognition as both coasts, something really special is happening in Minnesota. There is this unique space for artists to work and thrive, have somewhat affordable housing, and we’re sort of on this funding island — we really do have a unique amount of funding for artists compared to our surrounding states.”

Williams wanted Untitled 19 to be “a favor to not only myself but to all of ourselves in this moment,” knowing that in the midst of the post-inauguration months of February and March we would be needing spaces of connection and expression. “During times of stress I think especially when you're thinking about a national, political atmosphere that's building, we have to turn towards our communities, and for me turning to artists to find ways to process emotion but also just to visualize the intangible, is something that I’ve always done. I think that's why the show is important at this moment in time. It can just be a moment of respite for people, it can be a connector, or it can be a moment to take a pause, and really find something that inspires you in a piece of work, and I think, heal a little bit of your inner self, even if it's just briefly.” ◼︎ 

 

Untitled 19, installation detail. Photo courtesy of SooVAC.

 

Untitled 19 is on view at SooVAC through March 23. Gallery hours are Thursday & Friday, 10am – 5pm, and Saturday & Sunday, 11am – 5pm. To see more, visit the gallery's website or follow them on Instagram @soovac.