Wed 3/15 @ 7-8PM
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.
Her new show, In Confidenza: Secrets and Transcendence, an interactive fiber installation, is currently 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.”
On Wednesday March 15 at Trinity Cathedral, there’ll be a program tying in with the show, called “Life: Before Roe and After Dobbs.” Episcopal priest, the Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Kaeton, who has worked with the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice since 1995 and trained clinic volunteers, will present a program via Zoom on the history of the reproductive choice movement and the Episcopal Church’s role in its, past and present. That will be followed by a facilitated in-person conversation. It’s free and open to all.
The show will be on view through March 31.