Vernissage: Saturday March 26, 2:00-5:00 PM
Artist talk: Wednesday April 6, 7:00 PM EST
Register on Zoom
Gallery 101 is pleased to present: Thread Counts featuring local artists Alexia Kokozaki, Carl Stewart, and Zainab Hussain.
Through their textile-based explorations with weaving, embroidery, sewing, and installation these artists gather, unravel, layer, and stitch together the intimate, the personal, and the political. The resulting art works are charged carriers of real and imagined histories, recounting stories that are just slightly out of reach.
Alexia Kokozaki’s here are some flowers to remember me by is a series of multimedia works revolving around a documented artistic intervention performed in Nicosia, the divided capital of Cyprus. As a memory map of this intervention, Alexia’s pieces trace themes of land, family, and memory, while contemplating the relationship between two people who have never met: the artist and her late grandfather.
Carl Stewart’s wholecloth fabrics are made from reclaimed materials taken apart and re-woven on a loom. As new, whole fabrics are re-fashioned from once recycled and repurposed parts, Carl asks: Does the new cloth retain any vestiges of its previous life? Does it resonate in the hand, to the touch? Does it remember? As we consider these questions we begin to suspect that the whole cloth is not the whole story.
During the vernissage, Carl and his partner, Grant de Boer, will perform The Rent Sheet. This piece considers the ongoing acquisition and attrition of objects as we move through our lives, and how we acknowledge or shed the past and the choices, compromises, and sometimes demands made when choosing to make a home with another person.
Zainab Hussain’s Meree Betee بيطي ميري and Personal Mythology series on found fabrics and multimedia installation with vintage sarees deal with questions of identity building through shared memory, physical objects, and family photographs, while also exploring concepts of home, homeland, cultural transmission, and intergenerational exchange in the diasporic context.
Acknowledgements:
Carl Stewart is grateful for the support of the Ontario Arts Council, The Canada Council for the Arts and the City of Ottawa.
Zainab Hussain gratefully acknowledges The Ontario Arts Council and City of Ottawa For their funding and support.