The Intimacy of Care features a body of work I developed over the past 2 years. 

The domestic sphere with its many layers of visible and hidden realities has interested me for many years. The 2019 tapestry cycle Domestic Thread looks behind facades to unveil some of the difficult realities in the private sphere. 

When the pandemic stopped us in our tracks and sent many of us home, we witnessed the unfolding of an unfamiliar world largely from domestic confinement. I captured private interactions just as much as public accounts in daily drawings over 100 days ending on July 4th, 2020. At that point our local lives started to gradually open yet we soon realized the world remained in limbo and that we all had been transformed by the spring of 2020 and were on a journey without a clear destination.

By early 2021, the sustained ambiguity that spread throughout public and private life, and the ominous quality of the 2021 winter crept into my drawings which became darker, psychologically more demanding, and unsettling. Staying with the challenges, giving them space to speak, and treating them with an open heart have offered me a way to navigate in a meaningful way through this altered, raw, and uncertain new reality while maintaining a sense of belonging. 

Throughout the past 2 years, I have turned to handwork as a source of simple joy and meditative restoration. For the duration of the exhibition, I will offer inspiration and materials in the form of an explorative fiber lab where visitors can participate, observe or research and pause. 

Domestic Thread

Domestic Thread is a series of fiber collages evolving around the more or less subtle erosion of female wholeness in the domestic sphere. The home is usually created and cared for largely by women and is meant to serve as shelter and give comfort. However, the home is also the most common venue for violence against women, whether in form of micro-agressions curtailing female power and confidence, or in outright manifestations of assault, abuse, and violence, frequently using sexual objectification as a driving force. Appearances tend to be maintained so that the breakdown of female mental, physical as well as spiritual health and integrity enfolds behind inconspicuous facades.

Quarantine Drawings

In the spring of 2020 soon after the start of the lockdown, I committed to post 1 drawing per day on social media. I felt that the best I had to offer as an artist was my work and so I used my cognitive-emotional experience to record this moment in time by way of drawing. Since many of us remained at home and much of our understanding of the enfolding pandemic was witnessed and processed in the digital realm, I used this context to share my work. I decided to stay true to this format and present the 100 drawings which were done between March 27th and July 4th 2020 in the digitally in this exhibition. The size of the drawings corresponds roughly to the dimension of the display screen.

Metamorphosis II

Metamorphosis II is a cycle of drawings generated in the spring of 2021, a year after the outbreak of Covid 19. While the 100 Quarantine Drawings of the previous spring in retrospect seemed to have drawn themselves, these latest drawings were emerging slowly and the process as well as the imagery has been filled with the almost disabling anxiety that lay in the air of the spring 2021 after the violent insurrection at the US capital, and with a political war relentlessly raging over the realities of Covid 19 and its proliferations

When I use my hands to stitch I feel timeless 

and intimately connected to people across space and time

who have held a piece of cloth, needle and thread. 

Stitching is a slow process that connects us in a non-specific strata

potent with a universal heartbeat. 

My child settles down next to me, relaxes, chats.

A new space enfolds, invites us, holds us. 

I continue to stitch…

the leaves rustle in the summer breeze,

fog moves in from the water,

and dusk follows quietly.

Something is cooking.

Our house breathes peacefully,

the dogs circle us, collect their pets from us,

and find their spot.

Night settles in

… as gratitude spreads its mantle.

When I use my hands to draw I feel challenged, alone.

Drawing feels demanding,

insistent on struggle as it

drills into the dark corners of my soul

to be rescued only by absolute devotion.

I wrestle my truth from the disorienting cluster of lines in front of me

and gasp for air with whimsy and ornamentation.

There is nothing serene, nothing easy about drawing in my world.

Yet there are moments when light flashes across the surface

and a gesture or a face will appear and restore my faith

that I was made to be here. To struggle. To surrender. 

To unearth even just one voice from that cacophony of universal rumble.

- Uli Brahmst