June 2024
This exhibition looks at knot tying practices that have been used for magic, play and physical healing. The child’s game of making string figures on the hands was used both to predict the future and cast spells in ancient folk traditions. Also found in the field of medicine, the earliest known account of a string figure is found in the 100 AD monograph about surgical knots by Greek Physician Heraklas. Examples of specific knots depicted in the works here were known to help a woman breastfeed, cause impotence in a cheating husband or cure muscle cramps in humans and animals throughout Central Europe and Scandinavia.
Works use techniques of natural dyeing, hand stitching and macrame. Materials have been sourced from Icelandic nature (dandelions, lupine, rowan tree berries and chlorophyll) as well as Finland (lupine, pink granite and various flowers) through a walking and foraging practice. These are boiled with rusted objects washed ashore from the sea to create site specific pigments and non-repeatable patterns on cloth. The hanging work uses thousands of macrame knots to hold small pieces of Finland's pink granite and paintings used inks made from foraged plants.
Theoretical threads of cultural anthropology, ecofeminism and hydrofeminism contextualize the work while it ties the artist's body to various forms of ecology. Her practice can be seen as a form of alchemy in which ordinary materials are transformed into gold. Around the potent time of midsummer, this exhibition aims to shine light on the threads that tie women to creation, guided by the Finnic shamanism belief that nature has the answers to all questions.
Photos by Adolfo Vera
April - June 2023
Liget Galéria Budapest
Curated by Veronika Molnar, this show links art, forestry, and community building together. “The Women Who Plant Trees” is the outcome of a 3-month research project at the Icelandic Forestry Association. It gives visibility to the women who have been (and still are) participating in the reforestation efforts led in Iceland since the 1930s, and documents how they engage daily with their forests. The archival digital publication features conversations the artist had with women inside the forests of Eyjafjörður, Iceland’s largest tree nursery in Akureyri and those working at Skógræktarfélag Íslands.
The exhibition provides an immersive experience for viewers that reflects Hughmanick's time spent in Icelandic forests. Works include field recordings of nature sounds, plant dyed textiles and printed photographs that were taken on a film camera the artist has been using for 23 years. All material was collected from the sites where the interviews took place, including foraged plants for the textile coloring process of natural dye. The title of this exhibition references a text by French writer Jean Giono titled The Man Who Planted Trees. It is a 1953 short story about one shepherd's long and successful single-handed effort to re-forest a desolate valley in France. This archival project highlights reforestation efforts led by women and activates forests as space for community building through creative acts that reconnect people to nature.
Photos by Richárd Tóth
January 2023
Kannski Gallery, Reykjavík Iceland
Collaboration with D Rosen
Skynróf (Skyn -> skynja -> perception) (Róf -> sphere(s) [ in more-than-human worlds ]
What do birds hold onto? What do we?
In this installation-based show, Christalena Hughmanick and D Rosen pose questions around perception, ritual, and the meanings of symbols. The show developed through virtual conversations between artists across oceans and eventual in-person collaborations.
Pieces include Christalena’s hand stitched wall textiles that explore ideas of human building construction and projection in time. D Rosen’s chicken swings will be donated to the Turf House Museum in Iceland, as enrichment tools for their chickens. Each sculpture created for the exhibition has a blue magenta color palette to correspond to Chicken color vision and promote calm. In the collaborative floor work, ice castings based on rituals with peacocks and infused with natural dye matter, slowly melted onto light sensitive photo fabric to create a pattern around Christalena’s lava “Options”.
Christalena Hughmanick (wall works)
Hand-holding in a cosmic disco (diptych)
piecing, reverse appliqué, hand top-stitching, with cotton fabric, batting & thread
66 x 52 cm (each piece)
2023
D Rosen (hanging works)
the repetitious cutting of domestication, of breeding systems—of violence
cast ice with natural dyes (original objects: hoof trimmings and manure)
8.89 x 6.35 x 1.27 cm
2022
Contrafreeloading within Domestic Enclosures
found root, hardware, vegetables
140 x 52 x 10 cm
2022-3
Preening and Sensory Enrichment within Domestic Enclosures
found root, hardware, cotton twine, vanilla
84 x 36 x 34 cm
2022-3
Collaboration (floor work)
communal feeding rituals with commensal species
cast ice with natural dye, geese feathers found in Reykjavík
9 cm (diameter)
2023
Options (part of The Truth Guide for the Beginner’s Mind)
found lava, resin on cyanotype fabric
1 meter x 1 meter
2023
December 2022
French Alliance of Reykjavík, Iceland
Listen to interviews with foresters in Iceland here
This project links art and forestry, with the intent of bringing the practice to the general public through an artistic perspective. It gives visibility to the women who have been (and still are) participating in the reforestation efforts led in Iceland since the 1930s, and to show how they engage daily with their forests. The digital publication features conversations Christalena had with women inside the forests of Eyjafjörður, Iceland’s largest tree nursery in Akureyri and those working at Skógræktarfélag Íslands. Field recordings of nature sounds and printed photographs taken at the visited sites will be exhibited, providing an immersive listening experience for visitors. This event marks the release of both the feature length album to all major digital music platforms, where the content will remain permanently accessible. Photographs taken in the forests with a vintage film camera will be on view. The title of this exhibition references the French writer Jean Giono’s The Man Who Planted Trees. It is a 1953 short story about one shepherd's long and successful single-handed effort to re-forest a desolate valley in France. This archival project highlights reforestation efforts led by women and activates forests as space for community building through creative acts that reconnect people to nature.
Photos by Sadie Cook
April 23, 2021
SIM, Reykjavík Iceland
Collaboration with Sadie Cook
Materials: artists’ bodies, water (Krosslaug hot pot), gold paint, cyanotype fabric, ritual book, LYSI fish oil, table, Sadie's bedroom chair, frames, video stills, photographs, Hanes boyfriend briefs, onlyfans account, google business account, website, hair, a flower
Do you feel unsatisfied right now? Have you thought about joining or leaving a group? Do you desire to be someone else or nothing at all? If you answered yes or maybe to any of these questions, there might be something for you in the Golden Dip. We are in an accelerating and collective period of spiritual hydration. Our bodies and the objects that surround them have a unique, time-sensitive opportunity to undergo elemental transition and you can be a part of this global shift. The earth needs you to lay your hands on some things in order to help facilitate the delicate process of sacred plunging into the depths of the divine and eternal change. Join us for a transmutational journey into a state of nothing or anything that you most desire most.
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Golden Dip yourself with our Ritual Text
October 2020
HOME Gallery, New York NY
In this ongoing public engagement series, empathetic strategies are used to create a platform for people passing by the window to articulate what they want to see happen in the year 2020. Each work is made for a specific publicly accessible window; an exhibition format that has adapted to the current state of art space closures caused by the Coronavirus pandemic. All people passing by are able to submit their “some thing grand” through a QR code displayed with each work.
These quilts use archeology and photography; involving dynamics between presence and absence. Photographs taken by the artist of ancient architecture and material culture are translated into cyanotype fabric prints and stitched with her poetry. Originally developed to reproduce diagrams for construction and industry, the cyanotype process used here mediates photography and fabric, making and viewing, past and present through the lens of its origin. This work aims to open a line of inquiry around what people want to see happen right now, at this decisive moment in history that calls for vast structural change. Read full PRESS RELEASE.
Image 1: some thing grand
Location: home gallery, New York, NY
Exhibition Dates: October 10 - November 15, 2020
Dimensions:
Materials: cyanotype fabric print, batting, polyester thread
Image 2: Agora of Smyrna, Izmir, Turkey - December 21, 2019
Location: Bill’s Auto Repair, Chicago IL
Exhibition Dates: November 10, 2020 - current
Dimensions: 18" x 29"
Materials: cyanotype fabric print, batting, polyester thread
Image 3: Ízmir, Turkey, December 19, 2019
Location: TUSK, Chicago IL
Exhibition Dates: November 10, 2020 - current
Dimensions: 48" x 36"
Materials: cyanotype fabric print, batting, polyester thread
May 22 - June 21, 2019
Faur Zsófi Galéria, Budapest
Materials: hand stitched reverse appliqué, trapunto and quilted resist dyed cotton fabric, thread, batting
wood, cotton rope, paster, snail shells, ancient concrete, paint, plastic bird decoys, carabiners
Photos by Isaac Campbell
January 2018
Wedge Projects, Chicago
Materials: polyester, foam batting, tulle, hooks, wire, cotton rope, plaster, paint
5 panels 4’ x 8’ / 5 chains 32” x 2” x 2”
A search image is a mental point of focus for archeologists that motivates them through the long and tedious hours of digging until something is found. This installation work was made in response to the ancient Roman ruins and artifacts found at Aquincum in Hungary. Please see SHOW ESSAY written by artist for more information about this work.
2016
Fernwey Chicago
Over centuries ancient civilizations devised simple tools for cartography, land survey and the construction of monolithic structures. The 3rd century BC engineers of Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Giza used the plumb bob to plot foundations and around this time, the concept of latitude and longitude was proposed by the Greek mathematician, geographer and music theorist Eratosthenes. This is the initial recognition that longitude can be determined by accurate knowledge of time and the beginning of humans living within a unified grid of time and space.
“These quilts abstract the traditional double four patch piecing pattern and utilize the modernist grid top stitch pattern as a system of order within which images can be unearthed by the viewer. Hanging on the wall and constructed out of gabardine, a fabric typically used for raincoats and trousers, these quilts veer far from their domestic connotations and stretch the tension between form and function, thus questioning what a tool can be. They ask “Can these works escape their perceived use value by becoming a navigational tool in the psychic space of dreams?” - excerpt from ESSAY BY JANET YOON
This work has been written about by Kate Sierzputowski for the Chicago Reader.
Variations on Navigation #2 -5
materials: hand pieced and machine quilted gabardine fabric, cotton batting, thread
55" x 75"
2017
Pair of Shelves
materials: ABS Plastic, foam, plaster, paint, flower arrangement by Yuko Inoue Darcy
12" x 12" x 48" / 12" x 24" x 24"
Photos by Evan Jenkins
2014
Document, Chicago
Materials: Burberry trench coat fabric, thread, D-rings, photographs, steel, felt
This collaborative work with Sterling Lawrence use rejected Burberry raincoat fabric in the form of moving blankets as a framing device. The photographic images housed within explore abstracts, a fragmented index of information from the beginning of known documented knowledge pertaining to surgical knots. Suspended knot braces become the support for sculptural clay forms, which are reminiscent of the body. Moving blankets deprived of their imagined utility have become the framing units for studies of surgical knots. These knots have three origins of intended use but the focus has been placed on how the knots hold a patient in position.
