Vanessa Thill

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  interviews February 18, 2020

  Kim Westfall

  The New York–based artist Kim Westfall’s cheeky compositions of tufted yarn contend with the banality of selfhood. Her works find humor in the insatiable human ambitions for uniqueness and authenticity, but also manifest real longing for deeper meaning and social cohesion. Her latest tapestries draw connections between human reproduction, the mechanical reproduction inherent in her medium, and ideologies of the ego that keep us stuck on repeat. “Splendid Bitch” opened on January 23, 2020, and runs through March 7, 2020, at White Columns in New York.

  THE THING ABOUT TEXTILES IS IT’S THE FREAK

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  interviews August 06, 2019

  Juliana Cerqueira Leite

  To make her sculptures, Juliana Cerqueira Leite often crawls inside large mounds of clay, casting the imprints of her body. By prioritizing touch and spatial orientation, her research has led her across different disciplines to explore gestures both physical and psychic. In her latest show, “Orogenesis,” Leite links space travel to the archaeological remains of Pompeii though anatomical postures of vulnerability in the face of vast environmental extremes. Installed in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples through September 23, the exhibition speaks to the endless possibilities for embodiment

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  print February 2018

  Doreen Garner and Kenya (Robinson)

  Doreen Garner and Kenya (Robinson) offered a challenge to deep-seated legacies of revered white men in America with their exhibition “White Man on a Pedestal.” After collaborating for two years, the artists put together eight new sculptures and installations (all works 2017) at the largest scale of either of their careers to date. As stories of sexual misconduct and harassment proliferate against the white supremacist backdrop of Donald Trump’s presidency—including allegations against former Artforum copublisher Knight Landesman—it has become clear that white men won’t descend from

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  picks June 23, 2017

  “Stranger Things”

  Sculptor Doreen Garner extends her inquiries into intimacy, hygiene, latent sexuality, and racialized violence in her first curatorial effort to date. From Chicana punk tattoo artist Tamara Santibañez to Hollywood special-effects animator Erik Ferguson, the artists in this group exhibition hit Garner’s themes from many different angles.

  Nakeya Brown’s photo series “If Nostalgia Were Colored Brown,” 2014, presents quietly domestic tableaux peppered with clues to a vibrant life: 1970s disco albums, salon hair dyers, curlers, and a flowerless African violet. In Ted Mineo’s pictures Mist, Not, Shipping

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  picks May 12, 2017

  Elaine Cameron-Weir

  Elaine Cameron-Weir’s current exhibition, “viscera has questions about itself,” feels like the laboratory/dressing room of a cyborg goddess. Five otherworldly garments and seemingly sentient accouterments occupy the gallery, titled with chopped and spliced phrases such as “subcutanean tantric the skingrip palpable, it” and “body conduit (dish of) psyche’ dissolved” (all works 2017). A long bolt of enameled crocodile-like skin, Snake 8, is draped down to the floor. In the middle of the gallery is a chain-mail garment with metal breasts and spine, subtly echoing Snake 8’s sinuous verticality.