STITCH: Syntax / Action / Reaction

February 16 - March 24, 2018
61 Washington Park, Newton, MA 02460

Opening reception: Friday, February 16th from 6-8pm

Panel Discussion: Saturday, March 3 from 2-4pm

From birth until death we’re surrounded by cloth used for swaddling, shrouding, warmth, sheathing, shelter, and ritual. Cloth is embedded with practices and customs traversing centuries of humanity. It has played a role in the shaping of history, the marking of those in power, enforcement of class structures, and as a means of establishing identity. Cloth acts as a barrier between the world and our bodies. It is used to help construct narratives about ourselves and to infer narratives upon others. Despite this vast integration into every aspect of life, we have little conscious connection to it; we are not taught the history of cloth along with the history of war.

Binding cloth together, allowing for its pliability of function and meaning, is thread. Thread is the basis for the language of cloth. It functionally and conceptually creates a continuous line reaching back to our origins and drawing us forward, bringing us in and out, over, under, and through, loop into loop. Using the thread, making the cloth, constructing form and meaning, is the stitch. To stitch something is to piece it together, to create closure, to establish connections between one and another. To stitch is to puncture a surface. To stitch is to create a line. To stitch is to move in and out. The stitch is action and remnant of action, a motion and a process of the hand, an epistemology of making.       

The artists included in STITCH create work that relies on the powerful language of technique and material to convey meaning, interrupting our ideas of normalcy and offering up new paradigms, paradigms that are based in the ever-fluid language of cloth. Through the work of these artists we can viscerally feel that a stitch is never only about surface.

Join us throughout the exhibition for artist demonstrations and participatory performances by the artists of STITCH. A full list of events and programming can be found HERE.

Image: Andrew Mowbray, Falsetto, tyvek and thread, 81"x73", 2015