SOLO EXHIBITION – «Women’s Swim» 2017
R.Blitzer Gallery. Santa Cruz, California – Curated by Gabrielle Haugen

Women’s Swim

The impetus of Women’s Swim, an underwater variation of the worldwide Women’s March, is to question the Feminine in-and-of-itself. A face to face between the Mother and the Woman who, together, question the ocean as a prism at once poetic and political.
From the sex strike in Lysistrata to the Women’s March in 2017, the female body oscillates to this day, between subject, object and the means of oppression.

The circularity of the tondi, a formal visual characteristic of the Feminine, evokes also the cyclicality of waves, which adds to the tondi’s rotating structure.
Each tondo, turning on its center, induces the hypnotic reverie that conjures oceanic infinity.

Unbound by female creatures, ligatures, though they evoke isolation, are also a mise en abyme for the domestic arsenal of weaving, spinning, and sewing. These aquatic weavers, freeing themselves from the entwines of their practice, plunge the viewer into an inverted world, where Mother and Woman, top and bottom, and sea and sky merge; emphasizing the feminine essence of ambiguity in these underwater theaters.

Women’s Swim is a timely evocation, just one year following the election of Donald Trump, whose remarks spurred millions to march and continue to ring in our ears across the globe. Rather than provoking political sensibilities, the exhibition strives for a meditative reflection about women and their condition in 2017. Illustrated in tactical neo-impressionistic points, the wooden tondi encircle women without race, age, nor identity. Void of preconception or subjugation, Kalie investigates women in their totality.

for a meditative reflection about women and their condition in 2017. Illustrated in tactical neo-impressionistic points, the wooden tondi encircle women without race, age, nor identity. Void of preconception or subjugation, Kalie investigates women in their totality.