Group show, Rubbish, opened September 21, 2019 at the Everson Museum, Syracuse NY
Viddui Dolls, 2019 - Back Right. Stained bed sheets, human hair, laundry lint, a t-shirt, a pair of leggings, underwear, acupuncture needles, yarn, clay dust, red wine, vinyl tubing, and wire. Other works L to R by Katie Shulman.
Viddui Dolls are an embodiment of the Jewish ritual of Viddui, the confessional prayers of the Yom Kippur service. The dolls are made almost entirely out of repurposed materials, through processes of wrapping, twisting, knotting, tying, and piercing. The physical labor to create the work combined with the emotional weight the materials carry became a very personal confessional prayer.
We live at a time when conversations about the urgency of environmental sustainability have become significantly more widespread. Despite this fact, the production of single-use everyday objects contributes to growing piles of waste and refuse. What becomes of this litter once it is discarded from our daily life?
Rubbish features the work of six emerging Syracuse-based artists who question ideas of physical and emotional waste. The artists ask us to pay close attention to what and how we discard, relocate or reuse what is no longer wanted. Working across media and disciplines, Franco Andres, Drew Miles Davis, Charles Hickey, Meirav Ong, Ayesha Rumi, and Katie Shulman explore different ideas of sustainability, what it means to give materials a second life, and what all of this says about our cultural values.
