What We Become When We Are Unbound
February 13, 2021 - April 20, 2021

Project for Empty Space is pleased to present What We Become When We Are Unbound, a group exhibition of work by Jillian M Rock, Mimi Bai, Sarah K. Khan, Spandita Malik, and Priscilla Dobler Dzul. This exhibition is a culmination of work created by the artists during their residency in the annual Feminist Incubator.

At the center of the contemporary (intersectional) feminist movement is the tenet that we must become untethered from the constraints and restrictions imposed upon us by White Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy.* Feminist movement is about liberation. Specifically, it is about a liberatory movement towards equity and a squashing of social frameworks that restrict rather than elevate. What We Become When We Are Unbound. is a group exhibition of multidisciplinary artists whose work evokes the philosophy of freedom and the power that comes with it. 

The sentiment of being ‘unbound’ manifests in a multitude of ways throughout the exhibition. For some of the artists, such as Spandita Malik and Priscilla Dobler, the initial consideration is material. While the act of sewing and embroidery can be interpreted as a type of binding together, Malik’s work subverts that action into one of liberation through visibility. Her collaborative pieces allow for the telling of the stories, narratives, and lives of her collaborators from across the globe. Similarly, Dobler’s work, which also utilizes textile/thread processes of weaving and embroidery, is about collecting histories as part of an exercise in catharsis and a collective sense of being seen.

For some artists in the exhibition, this idea of dismantling that which restricts or binds is realized through the process of reinterpreting and physically dissecting the traditional form- the book. Sarah K. Khan’s literary pantheon extracts her fierce feminist protagonists out of the format of the traditional book format, an act that disrupts the hegemonic understanding of a ‘book’ and thusly symbolically disrupting the idea of patriarchal hegemony overall. Jillian Rock’s loose-leaf boxed book is also unbound: it is an act of collective voice and collective freedom. Like Spandita Malik, and Pricilla Dobler, Jillian works collaboratively to realize our interconnected liberation.

The final way in which ‘unbound’ is interpreted is through a more visually representative way in Mimi Bai’s collection of haunting black and white drawings. Her amorphous and fluid forms have protuberant hints of knobbled knees and skulls, but they remain undefinable and vapor-like. They are the visual epitome of being unencumbered. 

It is not just in material or process that these artists find common ground in What We Become When We Are Unbound. It is a sense of community that poetically binds them together: each artist is interested in either creating narratives, or sharing the stories of others. Their works are vessels that contain the voices of many, the songs of the freed and soon to be liberated, the defiant whose presence in these artworks speak their truths to power. 

This is an exhibition about unweaving and then re-plaiting again. Severing the ties that bind, and stitching together new threads that connect. This exhibition is about creating a new structure, but one that allows for nuance, flexibility, and fluidity.

This exhibition was made possible thanks to the generous grants from The Andy Warhol Foundation of the Visual Arts and from the Newark Arts ArtStart Grant. 

*a term coined by social scholar bell hooks