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Wearing Interiors and Exteriors: Tori Ellison’s Shell

​​The dress is a staple of clothing history. Its form is associated with femininity, adornment, beauty, and formality.  Tori Ellison has historically worked with the dress motif since the 1990s, using them thematically for self-perception and bodily identities. As seen with her other featured dress piece, Burnt Dress (1993) embodies the ideas of restoration and rebirth through charred remains. The contrasting outlines serve as a reminder of the past and room for new beginnings. 

Tori Ellison, Burnt Dress, 1993, Drawing, Charcoal, Acrylic Polymer, Ash, and Fabric on Paper, 50 x 38 in.

Ellison continues to explore this shape with Shell (2010), a wall-mounted paper dress sculpture. Shell immediately captures attention the way it “floats” on display, as if it’s worn by an invisible being. There is an indisputable mystery and allure surrounding the piece’s voice. We Live in the Sky features Ellison’s interpretation of metamorphosis through Shell’s commentary on personal growth and discovery. 

Tori Ellison, Shell, 2010, Paper, Wire, and Acrylic, app. 5.5 x 45 x 2 in.

We Live in the Sky includes works with the spoken and written word. With accompanying textual pieces like Ellison’s  Sky Writing (2024) and Windows in the Sky (2024), Shell stands out as a piece without words. However, Ellison still gives the dress a voice of its own. Immediately, viewers will notice the spaces carved out within the layered paper. The positive and negative spaces that the paper dress occupies call for a larger inquiry about the intention of this piece. Though its exterior beauty is its main element, it is also important to note the interiors. The organic shapes, layering, and curves of the dress create an invitation instead of a rejection. Ellison’s piece finds itself in a space of temporariness. Shifting localities and movement as the paper medium adapts to the surrounding air. Despite the stillness of the room, Shell stands unafraid. It commands a certain vibe that almost asks for one to keep looking. Like the shells you may find on the beach, Shell’s pearlized surface is a delicate exterior holding untold stories inside.

Shell gives its paper fabric a new form outside of its traditional 2D planes. Perhaps it serves as a literal shell for interpretation. Can we see ourselves inside the dress? Even the name Shell, implies an emptiness to be filled. In a space about displacement and identity, what can our exterior and interior selves find within Shell? Can we find a home in spaces unconventional to us? Beyond gendered clothing, Shell offers a found shield against the changing world. It provides the mind a space to grow into, a hidden place to house one’s vulnerabilities, secrets, and memories. 

Since the beginning of human history, paper has been used to account. It is not far off to assume that paper and humanity are deeply intertwined. In line with conversations surrounding transformation, it leads to a major question: how does paper align with the self? The properties of paper can be closely associated with conceptualizing consciousness since paper can be created, changed, and destroyed. Even the way paper is made, it is taken from trees, turned into ​​wood pulp, and then pressed and dried. As paper, its form is impermanent and yet fixed, having the infinite capacity to become something new. Shell embodies this, as the living and ever-cyclical nature of paper actualizes the nature of identity. The self is never stagnant, it is to be molded, written on, and hung out to dry. 

Tori Ellison, Shell, 2010, Paper, Wire, and Acrylic, app. 5.5 x 45 x 2 in.

A dress is expected to form one’s body. We expect it to highlight the best and hide the worst. However, Ellison calls to honoring the uncomfortable places not explored. In connecting body, mind, and identity, she asks us to reevaluate the ways we view ourselves in the idealist of shapes. Perhaps we can all learn to wear Ellison’s Shell, to make it a home, to remodel it, and eventually outgrow it.

Tori Ellison’s work is included in We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from October 16 to December 7, 2024. For more information on Tori Ellison, visit https://www.toriellison.com/. For more information on We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery.

Current Exhibition

Window to Earth

We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity from October 16 to December 7, 2024 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Oliver Foley

We Live in the Sky is an exhibition dominated by the tones of paper and black ink, with the vast majority of the works on paper using an achromatic palette. Amongst these works, Tori Ellison’s Windows in the Sky (2024) stands out as one of the exhibition’s only multicolor screenprints. Screen prints only have two discrete values of color: there are areas where the screen allows ink through and areas where the photoresist is hardened and the ink cannot pass through. In order to create the illusion of grays and color gradients, this piece employs a technique called halftone. Halftone prints transform an image into a grid of colored dots, and these dots are scaled in size based on how much of a color should be perceived. In Windows in the Sky, the paper is black, so the space left between the halftone dots of the color results in a darkening of the perceived color. The areas of intersection where the different colored screens meet appears lighter and more saturated, since more of the black background is obscured by the ink.

Tori Ellison, Windows in the Sky (2024)

This dark, yet colorful piece is hung opposite from Tori Ellison’s Sky Writing (2024). The airy, freely floating Sky Writing hangs in stark contrast to the earthy tones of Windows in the Sky. The parchment is semi-translucent like a cloud covering the sun, sparsely adorned with the shadow-like tendrils of calligraphy. One of the central sheets of Sky Writing even uses the same screen as Windows in the Sky, but in a neutral black rather than a hued ink. The bird of the earth and bird of the sky face each other in the gallery space.  The two pieces mirror each other in many ways, including literally: Windows in the Sky is enclosed in a highly reflective glass frame, which almost always reflects the lights of the space and Sky Writing. At times the dark print is overpowered by the reflections, like the reflections of sky on a lake. Standing in this space between Sky Writing and Windows in the Sky conjures up the feeling of floating amidst dense clouds and looking down onto earth through a small window. 

Tori Ellison, Sky Writing (2024)

Tori Ellison’s work is included in We Live in the Sky at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from October 16th to December 7th, 2024. For more information on Ellison, visit https://www.toriellison.com/. For more information on We Live in the Sky and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/articles/stamp_gallery_presents_we_live_sky_home_displacement_identity or visit our instagram @stampgalleryumd.

Current Exhibition

Finding Home: Mami Takahashi’s Cage Mentality

We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity from October 16 to December 7, 2024 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Ellen Zhang

We Live in The Sky is an exhibition that combines diverse voices on what home means to individuals. From Tori Ellison’s use of UMD writing students’ phrases about home to Mami Takahashi’s experience as a woman away from her Tokyo home, both artists explore belonging and identity. How Takahashi’s piece “Cage Mentality” expresses belonging, or the lack thereof, particularly struck me. 

Cage Mentality (2015) is a documentation of Takahashi’s one-hour-long performance, consisting of her building an enclosure of woven strings around herself. Starting with horizontal lines, Takahashi builds a layer of strings inches away from herself. With limited body movement, the artist closes the gaps of the horizontal strings by weaving, knotting, and crossing vertical lines. She does this until her entire body is hidden within the strings. When reflecting on the process, Takahashi states,  “In this uncomfortable situation where my body constantly touched lines, I had to force my arms to stretch more than necessary to continue to create a cage-like space”.

Mami Takahashi, Cage Mentality, 2015, documentation of performance, single-channel video, 03:00 min. 

In this way, the discomfort is self-inflicting, which makes the viewer question why Takahashi is doing this. Despite the uncomfortable process, she finds “the lure of isolation and its pain”. This represents how finding a “home” in a foreign environment is complex as navigating personal identity while facing social pressures can lead to isolation. While seclusion is painful, it can be enticing because it offers refuge from external forces such as adapting to a new language, traditions, and more. However, rejecting pressures to conform isn’t exactly liberating. The fear of losing one’s identity contrasts with the desire to fit in, resulting in internal turmoil. Social connection is a basic human need and, unfortunately, many immigrants feel pressured to sacrifice elements of their identity to satisfy it. In Cage Mentality, the social connection disappears as the barrier between the individual and the outside world becomes starker. 

So what does Cage Mentality say about home? We typically associate the term “home” with comfort. However, Takahashi challenges this idea by reflecting on the complexities of finding this source of solace. The quest for home includes mental turmoil and can lead to painful isolation. At the same time, solitude can provide a sense of security, allowing individuals to remove themselves from the pressures of a foreign environment. 

Takahashi’s work is included in We Live in The Sky at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from October 16 to December 7, 2024.

For more information on Mami Takahashi, visit ​​https://mamitakahashi.art/.

For more information on We Live in The Sky and related events, visit stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery.

Current Exhibition

Hidden in Plain Sight: The Paradoxes of Self-Expression in Mami Takahashi’s Writing Myself

We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity from October 16 to December 7, 2024 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Noa Nelson

Mami Takahashi’s video performance Writing Myself is a fascinating exploration of identity, language, and the paradoxes of self-expression. In this work, Takahashi uses writing as a tool not to reveal herself but to disappear, turning what could be a deeply personal form of communication into an act of obscuration. By transforming writing into a form of erasure, she invites us to contemplate the contradictions inherent in sharing our experiences while simultaneously shielding them from understanding.

The piece unfolds as Takahashi writes in Japanese –her mother tongue– on transparent film, using this familiar language to express anecdotes, quotes, memories, and thoughts. Born and raised in Tokyo, Takahashi often draws on themes of displacement and distance from home, and the use of Japanese in her work becomes a way of grounding herself within these feelings. The physicality of her process is deliberate and measured, it feels both intimate and meditative. As she writes, the text gradually builds up, creating a dense layer of characters that ultimately forms a barrier between her and the viewer. Her presence, once clearly visible, becomes obscured behind a wall of words, a literal screen of her thoughts that paradoxically makes them unreadable.

In Writing Myself, Takahashi wrestles with the tensions between expression and obscurity. On the one hand, writing is an act of communication—a way to connect, to leave behind a trace of one’s thoughts and experiences. But by layering the text until it becomes indecipherable, she complicates the act of sharing through writing. Her words, meant to be seen, are concealed, much like memories that fade with time or thoughts that lose clarity in translation. This paradox reflects the struggle between the desire to express oneself fully and the instinct to hide or protect certain truths.

  Mami Takahashi, “Writing Myself”, 2015, Single-channel Video, 03:00 min    

Takahashi’s work also comments on the way we face reality or escape from it. Writing, in many ways, serves as a means of confronting one’s experiences, offering a way to make sense of the world. Yet in Writing Myself, writing also becomes a means of retreat—a way for the artist to distance herself from the viewer. As she disappears behind her own words, she creates a space where the boundary between revelation and concealment becomes blurred. It’s as if she is using language to construct a mask, one that hides her while simultaneously revealing the contours of her thoughts.

For those who do not read Japanese, the text remains an opaque screen, inviting them to reflect on the limits of their understanding. Even for those who can read the language, the layering of characters turns the script into a visual rather than legible experience. The tension between the familiar and the inaccessible is present, echoing the complexities of cultural identity and the experiences of those who navigate multiple worlds.

Writing Myself serves as a powerful meditation on the contradictions of self-expression. Takahashi’s methodical writing process becomes an act of introspection, yet the final product is a wall that prevents true insight into her mind. It is a reminder that the act of sharing is never straightforward—every word we offer can also be a means of concealing, and every attempt to communicate can result in further mystery.

Through Writing Myself, Mami Takahashi challenges us to reconsider what it means to understand another person’s experiences. She invites us into her world, only to remind us that some aspects will always remain out of reach. Her piece, like the layers of text she builds, is a beautiful contradiction—an artwork that is as much about what it conceals as what it reveals. It serves as a reminder that art, much like language, is often most powerful when it embraces the spaces between expression and obscurity.

Mami Takahashi’s work is included in We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from October 16 to December 7, 2024.

For more information on Mami Takahashi, visit https://mamitakahashi.art/.

For more information on We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery.

Current Exhibition

Assimilation, Loss, and Home in Kat Navarro’s Kalapati Without a House

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

The process of immigration has always been a difficult one, no matter the time, place, or people involved in it. What most people don’t fully recognise, though, is that immigration is more than the journey alone. More than the arrival off a boat or the crossing of a border,it is a process that starts before the journey is taken, and in the case of a successful journey, continues for years after. 

I’ve personally experienced this process multiple times, having moved repeatedly across many different countries that I’ve called home in Asia. The feelings of uncertainty that come with repeatedly losing friends, a sense of familiarity, and over time a slow degradation in my own native French that my mother and I continue to speak over the years as we moved from China, to Singapore, to Korea, and then to the States. Wherein the process partially assimilated us into each place as we learned to call them all home before having to leave each one as we engaged with the many cultures and people in these countries. 

In our current exhibition, The Digital Landscape, there is no better representation of these layered notions of home, assimilation, loss, and language that come about due to immigration than Kat Navarro’s Kalapati Without a House. Tucked away in the Gallery’s nook at the very front of the Gallery, visitors can sit and watch Navarro’s animation where every two minutes, hands that support a Bahay Kubo (a kind of house indigenous to the Philippines) strip away a part of it until the last hand drifts beneath the waves. As this occurs, less and less of the animated birds come to roost in the Bahay Kubo, a parallel to the how the pigeons that Navarro’s family raised in the Philippines slowly left one by one before her family immigrated to Baltimore. 

Kat Navarro, Kalapati Without a House, 2023. Mix Media animation project, 16:00.

By animating a symbolic representation of her family’s experience with immigration overlaid with narration by her Tito (uncle) and Lola (grandmother) in Tagalog, Navarro’s animation captures many aspects of immigration. The loss of home and everything that was once familiar to her family in the past, the slow degradation of language that came with and continues to come with assimilating into another country, and the need to construct a new home in an initially unfamiliar and oftentimes hostile environment.

It specifically acts as a reflection of the past, of a version of a place that was once “home” that likely doesn’t exist anymore today as it once did decades ago, or at least to a recognisable degree. The animation is also a snapshot of the present and future where immigration continues to break down oral storytelling and language over time, evident in the untranslated narration of Navarro’s Tito and Lola as an ongoing part of their assimilation into American culture, while still retaining some of it by talking to one another.

Conversely, while Kalapati Without a House embodies loss that stems from immigration, the animation also embodies the notion of survival. Navarro’s family, like many immigrant families across the globe, persist despite the loss of the Bahay Kubo and untranslated Tagalog dialogue. Though difficult to create, I believe that the animation creates a sense of hope and familial unity amid the pain of losing one’s home and connections like her family’s pigeons to one’s original home. In the wake of assimilation and the degradation of culture, immigrants survive and work to resist this post-journey development to build new homes for themselves and their children. A new home in a new landscape, a home that will resist and survive the fate of its predecessor who can only exist in a digital environment like Navarro’s animation. 

Kat Navarro’s work is included in The Digital Landscape at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 26th to October 5th, 2024. For more information on Navarro, visit https://katnavarro.com/About-Contact-1. For more information on The Digital Landscape and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/articles/stamp_gallery_presents_digital_landscape.

Current Exhibition

What it Means to Linger

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I Resist This from March 4 to April 6, 2024 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Reshma Jasmin

The first time I visited Stamp Gallery’s I Resist This was on its fourth day open. The current exhibition takes the form of an artist residency, which means that the artist, Charlotte Richardson-Deppe, would be working on the pieces for the exhibition in the gallery itself throughout the course of the program. I had met Richardson-Deppe prior to this exhibition, but I didn’t know her in the context of her work as an artist. I also had never encountered a behind-the-scenes look into the artistic process serving as an artform itself. As such, I was looking forward to talking to her about the inspiration behind her choice to perform her process and watching her in action. But on my first day in the gallery, I was alone. A bit later, someone came in, and commiserated with me about not seeing Richardson-Deppe. But she noted that she saw traces of Richardson-Deppe’s presence over the course of hours or days— in Crocs which had been moved and through progress on a textile piece that was splayed out on benches.

When I came in the next day, I did see Richardson-Deppe, and I was able to chat with her and watch her work for hours. I learned about the function of her two sewing machines; one that was well equipped for heavier fabrics (machine on the left) and the other that was meant only for hemming (machine on the right). She told me about her thrift-store strategy of buying a large quantity of cheap clothes and how she mostly collected sweaters, pull-overs, sweatpants, and leggings by chance, but that such heavier materials held up longer for her wearable creations.

Stamp Gallery on March 15, 2024

I Resist This is an exploration of interdependence versus independence, and, in many ways, serves as social commentary about the futile desire for complete independence and the simultaneously undeniable need for social support. To one of the many UMD art courses that visited the gallery, Richardson-Deppe described how she wanted to make visible the invisible relationships and networks and explore different social dynamics. e also mentioned that her wearable pieces did eventually rip during performance, but that it was an expected and welcome end. She informed me that she also teaches in the art department, and I came in during the exact hours she taught a class the day before. I was relieved that I’d be able to see Richardson-Deppe once a week, so the disappointment of the day before dissipated. But the movement of her Crocs lingered in my mind. Why was the sign of previous presence more melancholic than absence alone?

Whenever I was in the gallery sans Richardson-Deppe, I’d look for her Crocs, and sure enough, they’d be in a different location than when I last saw them (See if you can spot them in the photos below!). It was comforting to know she had been there, but she also felt just out of reach. Would I see her again? Absolutely, and it would often be the very next day, and I knew that. And yet, each time I didn’t see her, I felt as though we were two ships passing in the night. 

Stamp Gallery on March 15, 2024 Stamp Gallery on March 15, 2024

Stamp Gallery on April 05, 2024

My expectations all came from the descriptor: Artist-In-Residence. “___-in-residence” is most commonly used for professors, artists, poets, etc. This use comes from the definition of “resident” from the 14th century Medieval Latin word residentem and/or residens, which refers to one who dwells in one location to fulfill their duty in a Christian mission/obligation sense. The phrase “___-in-residence” and the expanded context of the definition only began showing up in the 19th century. 

Related to resident is residence, or in Medieval Latin, residentia, which means is one’s dwelling place or the act of dwelling in a place. These words are derivatives of residere, which is Medieval Latin for reside. The broken down meaning is “re-”: back, again and “sidere”/“sed”: to sit. Together, residere means “sit down, settle; remain behind, rest, linger; be left.”

Richardson-Deppe’s pieces rest, remain, and are left behind while she’s not in the gallery. But Richardson-Deppe also lingers and settles in the gallery during the moments she herself is absent from the space. The growing piles of soft sculpture, the textile pieces approaching completion, the ever-changing composition of the items resting on her worktable, and of course, the silently moving Crocs all continue her performance of creation. The fact that all such changes occurred are signs of life, signs of Richardson-Deppe.

I Resist This is an exploration of interdependence versus independence, and, in many ways, serves as social commentary about the futile desire for complete independence and the simultaneously undeniable need for social support. To one of the many UMD art courses that visited the gallery, Richardson-Deppe described how she wanted to make visible the invisible relationships and networks and explore different social dynamics. 

Charlotte Richardson-Deppe, Red (2023), Screenshot from video. Performers: Gwyneth Blair, Lisa Dang, Sarah Gnolek, Amanda Murphy, Charlotte Richardson-Deppe, Kat Ritzman, Jill Stauffer, Allie Wallace, Jackie Wang.

The relationship between an artist and their labor is typically invisible; most exhibitions only display completed artwork, and even if an artist is present at times to discuss their process and inspiration, we don’t get to see them at work. Through her residency, when Richardson-Deppe is in the gallery, her hands on the textiles and sewing machine are seen; as the maker she is part of her work. However, even residents of homes leave to fulfill their other responsibilities and live out other parts of their lives. One part of being a “resident”  involves leaving and returning, being absent and present. In the moments when Richardson-Deppe is not in the gallery, the connection to her work that was once visible disappears. Yet, though we do not see her, we still unconsciously perceive her presence in the changes to her work and workspace. What is invisible is still there, even if it only exists in the abstract understanding that change occurred and someone was responsible for it. Like Richardson-Deppe suggests through her work, even invisible relationships are inarguably present.

Stamp Gallery on March 15, 2024

Stamp Gallery on April 05, 2024

Humans look for signs of life everywhere. In space, we search for biomarkers, water/ice, radio waves, pollution. In biology, we look for order, sensitivity or response to the environment, reproduction, growth and development, regulation, homeostasis, and energy processing. In my homes, I look for whose shoes are present and which ones; I notice what food in the fridge is slowly decreasing and whether things have been shuffled around; what the arrangement of dishes in the dishwasher looks like; what doors are open; whether there are lights turned on and which ones. I look not only for signs that someone was home or not, but also for signs of who specifically is, and what they might be up to, how they feel.

Even when their presence is dubious, we look for people. Regardless of how lonesome we feel, when we search for people, and even when they aren’t around, we find them. Sometimes, we’re not even looking for them but we feel them throughout their absence nonetheless. Even when Richardson-Deppe isn’t in the gallery, she lingers.

Our presence in each others’ lives is irrefutable and irrevocable. People come and go, but there are always the traces they leave behind. And as melancholy as it is to feel each other linger, there’s a comfort in knowing that people are always around us, that they always stay with us.

Charlotte Richardson-Deppe’s work is included in I Resist This at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from March 4th to April 6th, 2024. Richardson-Deppe will end her artist residency with the performance I Resist This on April 6th, 2024 at 7pm.

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

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OPEN CALL: Redefining Beauty After Human Asexual Reproduction

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LIMBSHIFT from April 20th to May, 19th 2023 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Isabella Chilcoat

Beauty exists in every age of human history. Classically, “beauty consists of an arrangement of integral parts into a coherent whole, according to proportion, harmony, symmetry, and similar notions” (Sartwell, 2022). By this metric, where there is harmony, a divine order, or a mathematical formula for aesthetic proportion, there is beauty. In every monumental human transition, humanity follows or creates beauty. Philosophy fails to provide a concrete answer that encapsulates the entirety of what beauty is, though. Therefore, beauty is a fluid thing, neither wholly subjective nor wholly objective. But when a new order appears, what is beauty, what becomes beautiful? 

The Stamp Gallery’s exhibition, LIMBSHIFT, is not only contemplative on beauty, it is challenging.

LIMBSHIFT features two second-year University of Maryland MFA candidates’ mixed media, multi-dimensional artworks that highlight the capacities of the human body and its limitations. One of the artists, Dan Ortiz Leizman, grafts emerging AI technology to tactile mixed media. Through their art, they hypothesize the possibilities of human asexual reproduction in the aftermath of nuclear destruction. Ortiz Leizman’s projections obliterate the present framework for gender, sex, and social identities, leaving open the space for considering beauty in an alternative landscape. In this hypothetical, asexual reproduction carries specific Darwinian hopes for eliminating some genetic diseases, altering public health, and mitigating gender discrimination (Jose de Carli, 2017). But while asexual reproduction eliminates a significant physical divide between people, it erodes individuality by limiting the gene pool in future generations. 

Imagine that there is no longer male or female, only human. There is no more variation in appearance as there is no more variation in ability. There is a new sense of sameness in reproductive ability which extinguishes distinctions in physical appearance. 

There is a new order to physiology, a new formula for evolution. Traditional sexual reproduction becoming obsolete means stripping “being sexualized” from the standard of beauty because there is no need for it. This dawn of asexual reproduction calls for a reconsideration of beauty from how it looks to how it feels, how it sounds, how it operates. How is it recognized? Moving away from the physical body and from reproduction, beauty can exist on an abstracted plane unencumbered by corrupt standards or social doctrine. Beauty detached from sexualization, objectification, and gender is open and free to shift into a new meaning. 

Beauty detached from sexualization, objectification, and gender is open and free to shift into a new meaning. 

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Dan Ortiz Leizman’s work is included in LIMBSHIFT at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from April 20th to May 19th, 2023. For more information on Dan Ortiz Leizman, visit https://www.danortizleizman.com/. For more information on LIMBSHIFT and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/articles/stamp_gallery_presents_limbshift.

Resources: 

  • Gabriel Jose de Carli, Tiago Campos Pereira, On human Parthenogenesis, Medical Hypotheses, Volume 106, 2017, Pages 57-60, ISSN 0306-9877, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2017.07.008.
  • Sartwell, Crispin, “Beauty”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2022/entries/beauty/.
Current Exhibition

The Artistic Body

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LIMBSHIFT from April 20 to May 19, 2023 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Oliver Foley

Art is transformation. At the most basic level, a work of art transforms materials from their raw forms into something new and beautiful. Over the course of these physical changes, the artwork undergoes intangible mutations, as well: the artist imbues thoughts, feelings, and meanings into the object. Through this alchemical process, the artist alters not only the physical work, but themselves. In LIMBSHIFT, an exhibition rife with parallelisms between body and artwork, we see into the heart of these transformations. 

This process of material and personal transformation is especially visible in Kenneth Hilker’s works “Increments of Time” and “Emotion Without Language.” Both pieces are large works of wood and steel, each constructed out of repurposed materials from various on-campus sources. For Hilker, the artistic process begins not with a concrete thought or idea, but a “feeling, or connection to the material.” From the very beginning, a sense of self is injected into the selection and collection of the scrap metals and woods. Plucked from their refuse piles, the objects begin their metamorphosis. The medium moves Hilker, inspiring Hilker to inscribe his own feelings onto the medium. 

The parallels between transformation of self and transformation of substance in Hilker’s work move beyond symbolic: the cooperation between self and art manifests in the work tangibly. “Increments of Time” was the first work in LIMBSHIFT that caught my eye. The eye-catching oceanic blues and burnt blacks combined with its large scale make it hard to miss. As the name might suggest, the piece itself represents a process through time. “I started with the left side, and you can kind of tell because it opens up to the right,” said Hilker about this piece. The form of the artwork evolved as Hilker’s perspective evolved. Like a relationship between two people, the artwork and artist transform each other through the course of the artistic process. From left to right, as “Increments of Time” develops from tightly-joined to more spacious and organic, we can see the art-artist relationship bloom.

Close-up of Increments of Time, Kenneth Hilker, 2023

The self is a fluid, fluctuating thing. “Emotion Without Language,” in particular, is a tangible artifact of the volatile nature of the self. In fact, “Emotion Without Language was actually a different piece up until about a week ago, when [Hilker]  took a pry bar to it and pried it apart.” Hilker “just didn’t relate to it” anymore, a simple feeling which reflects both personal changes within Hilker and the unpredictable course of the art-artist relationship. Sometimes you need to cut a piece down with a bandsaw to relate to it; Hilker’s unafraid approach to connecting with his work is central to the ideological and physical beauty of the pieces.

An artist’s body of work is an extension of their organic body. As materials become art, they are transformed, too, into the artist. Few things are more uniquely human than the ability to infuse the self into the inert, and few artists are more effective at displaying this reciprocal process than Kenneth Hilker. 

All quotes are sourced from a conversation between the author and Kenneth Hilker.

Current Exhibition, Top Picks!

The folding up of UNFOLD: The Art of Clothing 

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UNFOLD from January 30 to April 1, 2023 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Noa Nelson

Clothing has played an important role throughout history. Think of the Black Panther movement easily identified by their leather jackets and berets. Maybe you remember seeing AOC’s “Tax the Rich” dress at the Met Gala in 2021. Or perhaps hats and shirts endorsing specific political parties or leaders. 

Fashion can traditionally be used by people to fit in with a group, while usually also defining hierarchy and social structures. In the Stamp Gallery’s current exhibit, UNFOLD, clothing is also used to express individual beliefs. 

The clothes that we wear have deep underlying meanings beyond what is visible in plain sight. Our clothes speak louder than words. Clothing can be a reflection of social changes in our society. The work in UNFOLD brings overlapping perspectives about the ways in which our clothes display or voice a message. Clothing is not only about fashion or what is aesthetically pleasing. The art on view encourages visitors to ask themselves what the clothing they wear means to them. How does something seemingly meaningless carry lots of weight?

Elliot Doughtie, Sock Pile 3 (Laundry Day Dubuffet series), 2022.

Elliot Doughtie’s sock sculptures from the Laundry Day Dubuffet series play into the idea of using clothing as a means to fit in with the larger group. The plaster casts of red-stripe athletic socks are strong, muscular, and solid. They are repeated, grouped together, and intertwined with one another. With their repetition and stiffness, they speak about group identity regarding gender performance masculinity. Generally worn by men, these vintage-inspired socks give off an inherent masculine energy. They jog our memory of sweaty gym days in middle school. The Sock Pile sculptures and Doughtie’s drawing of socks titled  Group Activity feature an overwhelming number of socks. They show the socks enveloping each other, making it hard to pick them apart from one another. It is difficult to distinguish where one sock ends and begins. The socks in the middle are barely visible to the eye. This draws into the idea of group identity and performance. There is strength in numbers but no individuality or space for people to pave their own path within a group. 

Alongside Group Activity is another drawing by Doughtie of one singular sock entitled Solo. This lonesome sock reminds the viewer that there is an advantage in being in a group. Socks are meant to be in a pair and when we lose that one sock while doing laundry our once powerful pair of socks now becomes useless. Doughtie speaks about the power and danger of group identity, but also the importance of being a part of something larger and the ineffectiveness of complete solitude and lonesome behavior.

HH Hiaasen, Ventilated Workwear: GRIDsuit, 2016.

On the other hand, HH Hiaasen’s Ventilated Workwear seems to be representing the beliefs that we hold as individuals. The coveralls are from Hiaasen’s line of “anti-uniforms.” Simply by reading the name we can already get a sense of the message that Hiaasen wants us to walk away with. Uniforms link us to a group identity. Uniforms can give us a sense of belonging but also ask us to conform to the desires and needs of the group at large. Uniforms have the power of making us one of the many. The “ventilated” protective wear that Hiaasen has created directly fights the idea of a uniform. Their pieces force us to question the forms of clothing that we put on our bodies to guard ourselves. They do this by using conventional articles of protective wear such as coveralls, goggles, gloves, and masks with holes cut out in them. The holes in the coveralls work to expose ourselves and make us stand out as individuals. These forms of protection symbolize the ways in which we mistakenly believe that we are protecting ourselves, but also how we test the limits to form our own identities. 

So the next time you put on any article of clothing, ask yourself what is it about this shirt that I identify with or how do these pants represent my beliefs? How can I use a piece of clothing as an instrument for change? Allow your entire outfit to speak words for itself and to speak words for you.