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The Power of What We Don’t See: Reflections on Mollye Bendell’s Outgrown

The Digital Landscape from August 26 to October 5, 2024 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Noa Nelson

The Power of What We Don’t See: Reflections on Mollye Bendell’s Outgrown

In the modern world, we’re conditioned to focus on what we can see, on the immediate and the tangible. We view our surroundings, assessing value and importance based on what is in front of us. But art often asks us to dig deeper, to look beyond the obvious and consider the unseen forces at play. Mollye Bendell’s Outgrown (2022), with its engraved acrylic panels and augmented reality (AR) application, pushes us to do just that — it invites us to confront the unseen and the forgotten.

In Outgrown, Bendell resurrects the often-overlooked weeds that once grew in a space, visualizing a world where these overlooked plants thrive. Using AR, viewers look through a tablet provided with the installation and see the weeds rising up from the acrylic panels, reclaiming space in a way that transcends human control. These spirits are not just remnants of a past ecosystem but also a vision of a possible future, where the weeds have evolved into various flowers that grow and intertwine. Each one builds off the others, forming complex, beautiful networks of foliage. The physical panels, approximately 4×6 feet in size (all together), glow with an eerie beauty, but it’s the AR experience that elevates the piece from mere aesthetic object to a meditation on nature, memory, and visibility.

 

Mollye Bendell, Outgrown, 2022. Engraved acrylic panels, augmented reality application. Photo Courtesy of the Artist.

 

Bendell’s work operates on multiple levels, but what stands out most is its insistence on honoring what we don’t see. The weeds she portrays are not the curated flowers we often associate with beauty in gardens, but the plants we ignore, dismiss, or actively remove from sight. By presenting their new forms in AR, she makes visible the life that has been pushed out of view — both literally and metaphorically. The new form these weeds take in their resurrection is striking. They blossom into a variety of flowers, a kaleidoscope of growth and beauty. Bendell transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary, reminding us that even the most disregarded forms of life have their own potential to bloom into something magnificent. The resilience of these weeds turns into a celebration of their ability to persist, adapt, and thrive.

The piece also speaks to the power of AR itself — a technology that overlays digital images on the real world, making the invisible visible. Through AR, Outgrown transforms what would be a static installation into a dynamic, evolving interaction. This element reflects the tension between what we perceive with our eyes and what actually exists around us. Weeds, much like many aspects of life, often go unnoticed until something or someone draws our attention to them. In Bendell’s work, the use of AR acts as a metaphor for the limitations of human perception. It asks us to question what else we are not seeing. What exists beyond our narrow field of vision? 

There’s also a deeply ecological undercurrent in Outgrown. In many ways, it presents a post-apocalyptic vision — not of a world devoid of life, but of one where nature has “outgrown” human control. The weeds, given the space to thrive, suggest that even in the absence of human cultivation, life persists. Yet, what could have been a harsh takeover of an overgrown wilderness instead becomes something unexpectedly beautiful. The weeds evolve into flowers of different kinds, building off one another, creating a web of new growth, connected in their vitality. This post-human biodiversity is a haunting vision, but one with a redemptive quality. It’s a reminder that the natural world doesn’t need us to survive. In fact, it might do better without our interference. The ghosts of the weeds are both a eulogy for the plants we’ve displaced and a warning of the resilience of nature, which won’t sit idle forever.

This quiet rebellion of weeds is symbolic of the many things in life that exist outside our perception — the overlooked, the forgotten, the marginalized. Yet, when given the space, these elements flourish in ways we might not have imagined. Bendell reminds us that what we dismiss or attempt to control will not remain hidden forever. In Outgrown, these spirits of plants rise not in defiance but in quiet beauty, suggesting that nature’s capacity for growth is beyond what we can imagine.

The power of Outgrown lies not only in its visual elements but in its conceptual framework. It’s an exploration of how much exists beyond the scope of human vision, and a critique of our tendency to ignore what doesn’t fit neatly into our view of the world. By making visible what is usually unseen, Bendell asks us to reconsider our relationship with the environment, with the invisible forces around us, and with the things we choose not to see.

Ultimately, Outgrown challenges us to pay attention. The beauty and resilience of the natural world exist beyond our gaze, and just because we don’t see something doesn’t mean it isn’t there. There is power in what we overlook, in the spaces we leave behind, and in the things we fail to acknowledge. Bendell’s piece asks us to expand our perception, to honor what grows in the margins, and to consider that the unseen may be just as important — if not more so — than what is in front of us. And as the weeds in Outgrown transform into flowers, we are reminded that beauty can arise from what we least expect, building and growing in ways we never imagined.

 

Mollye Bendell’s work is included in The Digital Landscape at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 26 to October 5, 2024.

For more information on Mollye Bendell, visit https://mollyebendell.com/

For more information on The Digital Landscape and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery

Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP), Current Exhibition, Explore, Uncategorized

The clock strikes Infertile:  Gabriela Vainsencher’s Hourglass

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What We Do After from August 28 to September 30, 2023 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Reshma Jasmin

*Note: this post refers to womanhood and motherhood in a cis-normative manner due to the organ-centric focus of aging*

In the past three months, my father has brought up the topic of marriage, babies, and my biological clock three times—I am a 21-year-old college student. He likened my ova as the fruits of a mango tree: after it reaches its fruit bearing age, the best mangoes are those produced in the first three years. Ironically, I have endometriosis, so the question of fertility is up in the air.

Gabriela Vainsencher’s Hourglass emanates this anxiety, by creating the anatomy of a cervix in the shape of an hourglass, with menstrual blood slipping through the cervix like sand. But Vainsencher’s experience differs from mine, which makes sense as she is 20 years older, an established artist, and a mother. She is also a cis-woman who went through pregnancy and labor for her own biological daughter, and she depicts womanhood and motherhood within the realm of her personal experience. So the impending midnight strike of a biological clock means something entirely different for her than it does for me. 

Gabriela Vainsencher, Mom, 2021. Porcelain. 8 x 12 feet

Most of Vainsencher’s recent work focuses on the experiences of motherhood, notably Mom (2021) (pictured above). She describes the piece as “…a self-portrait inspired by living through the covid-19 pandemic, which started when my daughter was one year old. For over a year I cared for her, worked from home, and couldn’t get to my studio” (sourced from artist’s website). The large porcelain piece depicts a snake-like figure of arms and breasts doing various motherly tasks. The breasts are arguably what makes the biggest impact. Their literal function is to provide milk, and whether mothers use formula or breastmilk, the symbolism still stands: motherhood is allowing your nutrients to be sucked out of you, or in more palatable terms, giving up yourself for your child. While all the arms are occupied with various motherly tasks like cooking, shopping, cleaning, carrying a child, etc., there are just as many  breasts as there are arms, even though breasts only serve one main function in motherhood. Although there is also the long haired head at one end of the figure and the title to distinguish that the figure is a woman, a mother, the abundance of breasts hint at what else society demands of mothers: women who maintain their role as pretty sexual objects.

Mother Figure Series Sculptures (2021-ongoing) Porcelain, stoneware, underglaze, etc.

Vainsencher’s Mother Figure Series Sculptures (pictured above) depicts worried mothers, pregnant bellies, female anatomy, and the looming biological clock. The stretched, protruding bellies and the folds of skin on the backs of each torso show the toll of pregnancy on the body. The sagging breast depicts the loss of conventional beauty and youth that comes with age and motherhood. The key-chain earrings on oversized ears suggests that mothers are always in motion, always thinking about their children’s needs and schedules.

Gabriela Vainsencher, Hourglass, 2023. Porcelain, underglaze, glaze, acrylic

Upon seeing Gabriella Vainsencher’s Hourglass (pictured above), my first thought was, “How is this mounted on the wall?” Granted, I was watching the early stages of its installation in the Stamp Gallery, and the piece is made of porcelain and glaze, so it seemed a bit delicate to be held up the way that it is (on two screws drilled through the porcelain). In my surprise at how securely the piece was mounted, I realized that my assumption about the fragility and “weakness” of the porcelain was similar to the societal perception of women as the “weaker sex.” But the curved lines of the stretchy maternity pants on the conflated pregnant bellies from Vainsencher’s Mother Figure Series Sculptures and the bulges with the same curved lines tell a different story: they resemble striated muscles, signifying the strength written into a mother’s body.

The muscle-like bulges also create the hourglass shape, and lead the eye to the center of the piece, the cervix. The transition from the warm, cozy golden brown of the uterus to the dark dried period blood of the vaginal canal resembles the passage of time and a movement from comfort to discomfort. This gradient coupled with the rock-like shapes in the two halves of the hourglass shape depict the pain of aging; each period brings one closer to menopause, and the hourglass figure of a conventionally beautiful woman is also lost with time. Simply put, in our culture, old women are not pretty. The biological clock is a term coined by men to describe how a woman’s fertility is headed towards the precarious cliff of the age of 30 and later at menopause, but it also describes the anxieties of women where their worth and standing in society hangs in the balance of their beauty and fertility. 

The rock-like forms passing through the hourglass resonate with me, as periods and ovulation involve immense pain due to endometriosis. And, despite not being a mother, nor subscribing entirely to the identity of woman, nor intending to experience pregnancy and have a biological child; the fear of losing fertility and youth translating to the loss of beauty and worth is an anxiety I share in my own experience. With Hourglass, Vainsencher depicts the universal fear of aging, unique to those who identify as women and have female sex organs, as being built into our bodies as a ticking biological clock, a constant reminder of our fears and strength and worth. 

Gabriela Vainsencher’s work is included in What We Do After at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 28 to September 30, 2023. 

For more information on Gabriela Vainsencher visit https://gabrielavainsencher.com/

For more information on What We Do After, and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery

For more information about the Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP) visit: https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery/contemporary_art_collection