Kelly Savage “Pestering”
Soho20 Chelsea Gallery
This event has ended.
Pestering is an airing of grievances about airing grievances. Kelly Savage’s exhibition relays a narrative about how assertive women with agency are often regarded with alarming frequency as aggressive, a nuisance or a nag. Working with wallpaper and carefully hand cut paper as her medium, Savage seeks to capture that moment when a woman takes action and transforms, in the eyes of the other, from non-threatening entity to annoying pest.
Savage deliberately chose the medium of paper for its association with the decorative arts, and by extension, women. Reinforcing a gendered vision of artistic creation, Savage manually cuts paper with precision and diligence, evoking the toiling, daintiness of “women’s work.” She produces beautifully crafted goods with a seemingly homemade flare-consumed with aesthetics, and arranged tastefully in the space. At a distance, Pestering offers the viewer decorative, unassuming décor.
However, what at first glance appears to be ornamental background soon comes into focus as a field of infestation. Upon closer observation, it is revealed that the main components of the patterning are images of vermin, roaches and rats. In comparing women to invasive pests, Savage cultivates an atmosphere of uneasy tension, and illuminates a contradictory situation that often seems to face women: You’re damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t.
Media
Schedule
from March 31, 2015 to April 25, 2015