Wed 3/1 @ 7-8PM
Fri 3/3 @ 5-7PM
Sun 3/5 @ 10:10AM
Cleveland artist Anne Kmieck works with fabric and other materials to hand-create intricate garments that speak about the lives the women who might have inhabited them.
Her project, Riparazione: Meditations on the Fullness of Being (Woman), on display at the Galleries at CSU in 2017, featured 11 white embroidered christening gowns hung above white pedestals displaying objects, suggesting aspects of the wearers’ lives and how they defied or worked around the demands of the male-dominated Catholic church. The theoretical wearers ranged over 2000 years, from Mary, mother of Jesus, to Catholic Workers founder Dorothy Day and African-American nun Thea Bowman. It took the artist seven years to create the gowns and it was one of the most stunning exhibits seen here in recent years.
This week her new show, In Confidenza: Secrets and Transcendence, an interactive fiber installation, opens at the Trinity Commons Gallery a few blocks east of the Galleries at CSU. It features dupioni and habatoi silk hand-stitched, embroidered designs, prefabricated pillows and rosettes to explore issues of gender and identity.
“Creating In Confidenza was a response to the ongoing crusade to erase moral agency by criminalizing gender and reproductive decisions,” says Kmieck. “This work invites meditation on religious history, biology, and their revelations to empower in the melding of a sublime 15th century painting of the Madonna with an artistic expression of the extraordinary selective nature of the female reproductive system.”
The show will be on view March 1-31, with a public reception Friday March 3 @ 5-7pm. On opening day, Wednesday March 1 @ 7pm, professor Dr. Sonya Maria Charles of the Cleveland State University Department of Philosophy and Comparative Religion will lead a forum called “Criminalizing Pregnancy, Legislating Motherhood.” She’ll share some of her work on bioethics and feminist philosophy and lead a discussion on the connection between legislation taking away women’s reproductive choices and traditional gender norms related to race and class issues. Kmieck will also do a talk in the gallery on Sunday March 5 @ 10:10am.