NYAB Event - Michelle Forsyth "Over & Over"

Michelle Forsyth "Over & Over"

The Hogar Collection

This event has ended.

In One Hundred Drawings and Ostinatos Forsyth continues her documentation of historic sites of disaster. Instead of relying on images of spectacle, she has traveled to these places and documented things left behind. Fleeting presences—such as clouds floating overhead or wildflowers growing along the road—are the focus of this work. Using a process that is part requiem and part cathartic obsession, she translates these nearby presences into thousands of sinuous loops of undulating color, intricately cut and stacked paper flowers, and minute hand stitches to evoke ideas about memory, loss and grief.

In Text Work, Forsyth has scoured many old newspapers for written information. She has noted many poetic passages that conjure graphic images of their own. Punching quotes from these sources, which include eyewitness testimonies and first-hand accounts, into single sheets of white paper, Forsyth has left us with a lacey absence that provides a quiet counterpoint in this exhibition.

Seven historical disasters bind the work in Over & Over including: The Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse, The Frank Slide, The Hoboken Pier Fire, The Ripple Rock Explosion, Hurricane Hazel, Great Fires of 1947, and The New Carissa Wreck. Forming a historical backdrop for the work, the narrative accounts of each event do not overshadow the work, rather they act as a counterpoint to her own experiences at each site. In this mediation between past and present, Forsyth’s work raises questions about the continued depiction of violence in media-driven documentation of historical events.