Molly JF Caldwell: With One Hand Tied Behind My Back
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Esker Foundation 444-1011 9 Avenue SE, Calgary, Alberta T2G 0H7
Molly JF Caldwell: With One Hand Tied Behind My Back
Thursday 5 August, 6pm
Online, free
Join Molly JF Caldwell for an artist talk and Q & A with assistant curator Elizabeth Diggon, about her work and practice, as well as her current exhibition in the Project Space, With One Hand Tied Behind My Back.
In the Project Space located at street-level
Ruffled, red velvet curtains part to reveal a lush, textural interior. A 30-foot tapestry, cherry red and bubble-gum pink, snakes languidly across suspended bars and chains. The hand-dyed, hand-woven tapestry is adorned with jewel-encrusted charms.
Molly JF Caldwell’s new site-specific installation, With One Hand Tied Behind My Back, is a love letter to Penelope, a mythical figure from Homer’s Odyssey. Piously waiting for her husband, presumed dead, to return following the Trojan War, Penelope repeatedly wove, unraveled, and rewove a tapestry - ostensibly a funereal shroud for her father-in-law - to avoid her scores of suitors. Through her own textile-based practice, Caldwell considers multiple readings of Penelope’s labour.
With One Hand Tied Behind My Back can be read as the visual articulation of Caldwell’s ongoing research on the complexities and contradictions of labour, care, gender, and sexuality.