Brooke Toczylowski

Curatorial Statement 

Seeds are inert, non-metabolizing objects—the only way to know if one is alive is to bury it. Deep down in wet, loamy soil, a mystery takes place that has long confounded scientists and inspired philosophers. A dormant, desiccated seed cracks open, consumes itself, and transforms. Maybe breaking open and reshaping our material worlds—and ourselves—is exactly what we are supposed to do. 

The 14 women artists in this exhibition turn to their practices and materials to mourn, to be held, and to understand. As the theorist Donna Haraway describes it, they “make-with” their materials and subjects to make sense of the world. Together, Billie Lee and Genevieve De Leon engage in “scrying” (imagine peering into a crystal ball) to invite visions. Using the deliberate process of embroidery, Susan Wolf stabs and stitches excerpts from news articles onto a stage. Heather Bird Harris makes her own soil pigments, learning and listening from this rich material earth that faces, and endures, our ongoing extractions. Brenda Melgoza Ciardiello’s multidisciplinary practice explores an ongoing longing for home and wholeness. Deb Todd Wheeler documents the light, full of movement and life, in the seemingly still room of her late son. And on and on. 

This exhibit could be interpreted as a memorial. But during a time of rising fascism, it is also a ray of hope. These artists are guides. The artmaking process is a way to grasp the realities we live with, but it also can envision a new world, one where our creative human genius and community strength are more important than the bottom line. After all, death and regeneration are the natural order of things—and like a germinating seed, renewal lays bare new futures.  

Brooke Toczylowski

Link to Exhibition Catalog