Katrina Majkut “Fair Play”
Amos Eno Gallery
This event has ended.
Feminist and embroidery artist, Katrina Majkut reimagines the classical art practice of miniature portraits in an unlikely form: the baseball card. Featuring new artwork, Fair Play will be at Amos Eno Gallery and transformed into her version of a baseball trading card shop. There Majkut is reinventing who the baseball card worships, values, represents, and celebrates with a little paint and a whole lot of glitter.
The baseball card, a tiny piece of cultural Americana, held the fascination of many American youths including Majkut herself. Kids and kids-at-heart traded and coveted various players to add to personal treasure troves of sports role models and to represent athletic hopes. These mini advertorials taught fans who was important. And considering that those worshipped were all cis, able-bodied, heteronormative men, baseball cards also taught us who was not important. Growing up in Boston’s hardcore Red Sox fandom (#SorryNotSorry New York fans), the Curse of the Bambino was not the only shadow over Majkut’s baseball experience. It never dawned on the young Majkut that she was placing such importance on people who did not represent her and would never welcome her into their ranks.
Fair Play reimagines the world of baseball as a place of healthy acceptance, inclusivity, and diversity; a place to see herself – and anyone who has felt excluded from or a complicated role in men’s professional baseball – as a truly welcomed teammate. Fair Play subverts the toxic masculinity of vintage baseball cards by obscuring the identity of the player, teams, and brands with mediums that have been stereotyped as domestic, feminine, queer, effeminate, and low-end. The new players’ intersectional ambiguity aims to bring balance to baseball’s male-dominated space, especially as women and queer players have been omitted from its history and present-day teams. The joyful cards celebrate all players with the whimsy of beads, sequins, paint, embroidery thread, glitter, and more. Transformed into equitable platforms, the beautiful and inclusive sports cards are now worthy of coveting because they exercise fair play.
Katrina Majkut (My’kut), a Ukrainian American visual artist in New York, explores Western cultural practices and traditions and how they affect social and civil rights. She exhibits nationally in commercial and college galleries, where she lectures on gender issues, art activism, and textile arts. She actively plays softball.
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Schedule
from January 05, 2023 to January 29, 2023
Opening Reception on 2023-01-06 from 18:00 to 20:00