< Exhibition

Chelsea Minter-Brindley

Alloy Typical; Innate forms of Discontinuity, 2019.

Bronze 

(1) 8.5”x 4”x 4” (2) 8” x 4.25” x 4” (3) 9.5” x 3” x 3.25” (4) 6.5” x 3.5” x 2.5”

Alluding to Umberto Boccioni's Unique Forms of Continuity in Space, and his call to disrupt classical ideologies within art. 

I notice the invisible nature of textile labor within Western culture: the ability of fiber materials to exist fluidly between aesthetics and practicality, as well as the inherent sculptural qualities within garment making. When I was a child, my mother, who worked at a sewing factory, would hand-sew clothing from scrap pieces for my dolls. When she brought these outfits to me during a visit in late 2019, I became interested in the invisible and allegedly "natural" (women's) labor associated with this craft, as well as the memories surrounding their creation. Alloy Typical was produced as a collaboration between mother and daughter, a link between artists of different generations. I solidify the invisible and equate and the lost-wax casting process with "lost" textiles and lost childhood, the intangible past, my past, also my current self. Considering issues surrounding women and gender in art, I wanted to use bronze casting as a transformational method/medium, understanding that the original garments would be destroyed in the process as an attempt make visible painstaking labor, while also disrupting the "continuity" of their original associations with a supposedly-essential "women's work."

We are working with unsustainable social infrastructure.

For me, sustainability encompasses not only caring for the planet but also reexamining our current socioeconomic hierarchy and asking ourselves whether or not our existing political, social, and exploitive labor structures are sustainable. Evermore pertinent within our current pandemic, we can see that these structures, as they crumble, were never viable in any capacity. It is time to question the sustainability of our cultural practices as we are all forced to reposition our thoughts and reexamine what is precious and valuable.