RopeWalks in action; Video credits: Jordan Tate, Aubrey Theobald, & Mahnaz Amin Foroughi

DOUBLE VISION

I can never romanticize language again

       never deny its power for disguise for mystification

    but the same can be said for music

or any form created

       painted ceilings beaten gold worm-worn Pietàs

    reorganizing victimization   frescoes translating

violence into patterns so powerful and pure

       we continually fail to ask are they true for us.

–– Adrienne Rich, “The Images,” in A Wild Patience Has Taken Me This Far, Poems 1978-1981

Double Vision is a large-scale installation remixing modern temple architectures with an active making and pedagogical space. ­Textiles, banners, and rope-making engage dialogue around labor and value, identity and freedom, and emergent possibilities. Teaching and making art in the current political climate have deeply impacted this body of new work.

Artworks in this exhibition include self-drafted garments; large-scale, two-sided banners that function as soft architectures; paintings composed from recycled flag-parts, deconstructed garments, dog toys, and elements from LGBTQ+ archives; a double vision ritual; and a collage-prayer titled, Signals, that faces-off with of a 13 foot-long work titled, Jury Box.

Additionally, RopeWalk––a participatory artwork––will be ongoing throughout the exhibition. Inspired by Italian-American labor histories, the work is named after the 19th and 20th century industrial buildings whose form mirrored their function. The wall of braided ropes will grow, the shelves with bobbins ready for braiding, and the workshop area brings labor, value, play, and friendship into conversation.

ROPEWALK
GET INVOLVED

WEEKDAYS 12-4pm
Artist Amanda Curreri and the RopeWalk Crew invite you to join them weekdays 12-4pm in the gallery. RopeWalk is an ongoing, participatory artwork inspired by American labor and immigration histories. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, recycled flag material will be deconstructed and repurposed into long colorful strands for rope-making.

The RopeWalk Crew consists of the following School of Art DAAP students and alumni:

Mahnaz Amin Foroughi (MFA ’19), Karri Durham (BFA), Kiara Galloway (BFA), Kate Gibson (MFA ’20), Michaela Haawé (BFA), Alex Macon (BFA), Alex Phillips (BFA), Ellis Johnson (BFA), Becca Moskowitz (BFA), Elan Schwartz (BFA), and Aubrey Theobald (BFA ’18; Crew Manager and Studio Assistant).

ADDITIONAL ROPEWALKS
Fridays, 12-1pm, 2nd Floor Galleries
Feb 22, Mar 15, Apr 19, Apr 26

OFFSITE PERFORMANCE
SUN, APRIL 14 • 12:30-2PM
In conjunction with the CAC’s This Time Tomorrow Performance Festival, Amanda Curreri will present a large-scale, public performance on the Purple People Bridge. Fifty participants from various Cincinnati communities will work together to create ropes spanning the bridge as a symbolic and real action of public healing. The site is connected to the charged histories of slavery and freedom embedded in the Ohio River signifying the dividing line between the North and South in antebellum times. A gathering with light refreshments and will follow the RopeWalk (on the Cincinnati-side of the bridge).