Stretch Marks

September 9 — November 20, 2021

EXTENDED through Saturday, November 27, 2021

Virtual Curatorial Talk Saturday, September 11 | 11:00 AM CST

projects+gallery is pleased to announce Stretch Marks, a group exhibition guest curated by Jennifer Seas taking place at projects+gallery (4733 McPherson Ave.) September 9—November 20, 2021.

Stretch Marks is an exhibition that highlights expressive mark-making as a means to explore the material in the maternal and the experience of having a body and therefore a mother. Representations in painting, drawing, photography, fiber, sculpture, and ceramics reveal bodies in transitional states, stretching themselves, often reaching through time toward other bodies that precede or continue their own material existence.

The artists in this exhibition investigate subjects that include the experience of being a mother; our relationship to the Earth; materiality and tactility; abjection and the grotesque; portraiture and self-portraiture; domestic space; familial relationships; cultural identities; and feelings of love, horror, faith, and loss as they relate to maternal bodies.

With many references to the landscape—and trees in particular—the images in these artworks allude to the longstanding conceit of nature and the Earth as a mother, as well as how we often envision family lineages as both branches of a tree and roots. Another repeating motif in the exhibition is images of hands, suggesting tactile manipulation and the presence of touch. Connecting these many images and ideas is a critical attention to generation—both as an act of creation and a form of inheritance—with works that reflect on time, family, birth, and making in their myriad incarnations.