PRESENTATION: Shrine
The group exhibition “Shrine” includes new immersive installations by six artists who bridge ancient practices with technology, the spiritual and physical, and the artificial and natural worlds. The exhibition provides insight into each artist’s process and practice of resistance, self-love and preservation. The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh has been transformed into a site of renewal, discovery and personal and collective healing.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Mattress Factory Archive
Naomi Chambers is a painter and sculptor born in Pittsburgh in 1987. She graduated with a double degree from the University of Pittsburgh majoring in Studio Arts and Marketing in 2009. In 2017, she and her husband worked with a collective of artists to open FlowerHouse, a community art studio and creative space in Wilkinsburg where they offer workshops for the predominantly Black community. In 2018, she had her first solo exhibition. Naomi Chambers’ “Mommies Vs. Aunties” is playful, rooted in health, wellness and personal goal-building. A simulated soccer field, concrete cones and a television of Chambers coaching other Black mothers/aunts with life skills (juggling = balancing work/play) stand before an enormous goal, inviting the viewer to work through personal battles and celebrate accomplishments. Renee Cox received her BA from Syracuse University (Syracuse, NY) and MFA from the School of Visual Arts (New York, NY). Upon graduating, she participated in the Whitney Museum of American Art, Independent Study Program (New York, NY). Her work has since been included in solo and group exhibitions at prominent institutions including Tate, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Museum, British Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Reneé Cox explores Black identity through photography, collage, and video, using the body to displace religious symbols from white-centric paradigms. With “Soul Culture”, Cox collaborated with SoulRounded, an interdisciplinary team of Carnegie Mellon University students. Working alongside Cox over 14 weeks, this collaboration designed and developed new works using Cox’s Soul Culture imagery, featuring projection mapping and other interactive technologies. Mary Martin is an African American visual artist and educator from Pittsburgh, PA. After earning bachelor’s degrees in both Architecture and Fine Arts from the Rhode Island School of Design, Martin’s artistic practices expanded to include ceramics, collage, glass, metals, and printmaking mediums. Martin’s art forms consist of both functional and sculptural works that incorporate intricate carvings and linear patterning that adorn the vessel surface. Mary Martin’s “A Constant Struggle for Reciprocity” hosts a tea ceremony in a calming blue-hued room, full of small objects and vessels of clay, wood, fiber and glass. These serve as containers of spiritual and physical realms with abilities to both give and receive. This reciprocity is demonstrated through use of the double spouted vessels and intertwined weaving techniques.
LaKeisha Wolf is a self-taught artisan, whose insightful skills were honed in the embrace of the Africana cultural community in Pittsburgh, PA. She is the founder of a micro-enterprise centered on making and wellness. This multidisciplinary creator has grown her competency working to uplift and center her own healing, as well as that of Black women and the broader Black community, using nature, arts and culture. Beading and wire-wrapping gemstone jewelry is what initiated her artistic practice, which includes making in a variety of forms, all of which are anchored by a desire to reflect the highest forms of self love. LaKeisha leads through the lens of creativity, shared cultural values and community, working with artists and organizers to develop place-making strategies, models of equity for community resources, as well as local and global partnerships rooted in the values of fair trade entrepreneurship and cooperation. Wolf’s resources are purpose-centered relationships, stones and natural elements, symbols and affirmations. In LaKeisha Wolf’s “How Deep Is Your Love”, brightly colored cotton string takes up space, stretching across rooms as reminders of personal and spiritual growth. The environment is further charged by gemstones, crystals, salts and other natural elements that activate the senses. The centerpiece is Wolf’s medicine wheel, made up of sustainably harvested plant medicines. Alisha B. Wormsley is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural producer. Her work contributes to the imagining of the future of arts, science, and technology through the black womxn lens, challenging contemporary views of modern American life through whichever medium she feels is the best form of expression, creating an object, a sculpture, a billboard, performance, or film and thrives in collaboration. “Remnants, Portals and Power: The Afterlife” is a portal to a meditative void; a point of departure to a safe Black realm. This piece offers glimpses into family dreamscapes, sister and m/other-hood and science fiction. Audiences are greeted by opera singer Li Harris’ “Pythia Is A Black Girl’s Name.” Wall projection and modified salon chairs feature excerpts from Wormsley’s “children of NAN” archive. sarah huny young is an award-winning photographer and visual artist primarily documenting and exalting Black womanhood and queer communities through portraiture and video. Framing her subjects as muses, she often shoots on-location in personal, intimate spaces and natural settings. sarah huny young’s “7” is a lush, grotto sanctuary blanketed with vines of ivy, eucalyptus, and wisteria housing photographs of six towering Black goddesses who live harmoniously where cultural lines are nonexistent. Each goddess ties into motherhood, fertility, vengeance and rage. “7”, a symbolic number, is used by the artist to remind “every Black woman who steps in this space that self-preservation begins with a worship within one’s self…”
Participating Artists: Naomi Chambers, Renée Cox, Mary Martin, LaKeisha Wolf, Alisha B Wormsley, sarah huny young
Photo: Mary Martin, A Constant Struggle for Reciprocity 2022, clay, wood, metal, glass, tea, fiber, the soul, © & Courtesy the artist
Info: Curator: Jessica Gaynelle Moss, Mattress Factory, 500 Sampsonia Way, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, Duration: 17/6-30/12/2022, Days & Hours: Wed 11:00-20:00, thu-Sun 11:00-18:00, https://mattress.org/
