Everted Living

Cedar Crest College / Lachaise Gallery / Allentown, PA
September 8 – October 8, 2021

Curated by Roksana Filipowska

“Everted Living” presents different and idiosyncratic ways of processing the experience of the pandemic, as well as the resonances that emerge when artistic practices enter into dialogue with one another. Though each member made work within their respective pods, the objects, paintings and videos on view form a constellation around the theme of eversion, or the action of turning a structure inside out.

Drawing on industry films as source material, Amy Hicks extracts workers from their sites of production and, in the process, transforms both the industrial setting and the repetitive gestures of the workers to reveal new aesthetic and political possibilities.

Ephraim Russell reimagines objects by exposing and rewiring their hidden mechanics, as well as sharing his process of making thorough documentation that is both pedagogical and generous.

Focusing on the environmental effect of human industry and consumption, Maggie Mills, MFA, assistant professor of art at Cedar Crest, paints ambivalent scenes of ecological entanglement by relocating figures into abstract settings that are both ominous and spacious.

Angela McQuillan’s paintings offer microcosms of shimmering and emergent organisms; her images are a fantastical and meditative take on scientific imaging.

In a gesture of eversion, Diedra Krieger places the domestic, which is usually seen as opposite to the public, on display through performance work that shares the comedy, intimacy and vulnerability of motherhood.

When displayed together, the multiple practices suggest that life happens even when routines and systems turn inside-out. Eversion, though often uncomfortable, may lead to transparency, change and perhaps even liberation.