K8 Hardy “Aunt Margie”

Strap-On Projects

This event has ended.

K8 Hardy is not easy to pin down—or pin-up, but you already know that. Likewise her work, which loves to pin—identities, whatever those might be; style, yesish; image-context-meaning, sure—on the metaphorical mannequin of the moment, whether it’s herself (Instagram, Outfitumentary, self-portraiture) or the self-that-isn’t-her-but-kind-of-looks-like-her, as in her sculpture. Sometimes she is her sculpture! Anyway, it’s a moment, the moment of K8 Hardy, that typically feels brief, maybe too brief, and always a little provisional, like how some material might be gussied up to look like something other than what it was born to be: sticks and a t-shirt-shaped painting hammed together take on the faint outline of the human form (who is she?) or foam, wrapped in string and impaled on two ends by a yellow wire, that looks like a handbag. Whose handbag? Aunt Margie’s? Is it pronounced ont or ant?

The difference is regional. To southerners—K8’s from Texas—ont carries with it an aloof northern air. (Apologies to all onts above the Mason-Dixon line and east of the Mississippi.) And yet, Hardy, who is a proud aunt herself, often uses the hashtag #glaunting, gl-ont-ing, on her Instagram, suggesting she’s broken with her regional practice for the sake of something new, the glamorous aunt as not only one word, but a verb. You aunt. One aunts. One might even glaunt, like K8, if you’re lucky. A glaunt rubs off on you the more you spend time with her—or her work, which, in K8’s particular case, doesn’t obey the usual distinction between the maker and the made. K8 does things that stick, usually to you. They have that weird, tricky aura too few objects have, especially objects that are more of an idea than a thingy thing: they don’t leave you alone even after you’ve left the room, departed the exhibition space to get some real air. Instead, they tag along, little nieces and nephews tugging at your shirt or your foam handbag as you walk down the stairs and exit onto Canal.