GLASS CEILING: Art of Resilience and Fragility

Curated by Osman Can Yerebakan
On view November 8- January 13, 2017
Opening reception: Wednesday, November 8 from 6-8

Featuring work by artists including: Adel Abdessemed, A.K. Burns & Katherine Hubbard, Alexandra Ben-Abba, Jes Fan, Louise Lawler, Suzanne McClelland, Omar Mismar, Louis Zoellar Bickett, Sable Elyse Smith, Jennifer Wen Ma, Anna Campbell, and ALison Kudlow.

Glass Ceiling: Art of Resilience and Fragility, is a group exhibition bringing together artists who address challenges raised by representation of self and identity through glass. Coined for the first time by Marilyn Loden in her 1978 speech, the term “the glass ceiling” has gained further resonance within the current political and social climate prevalent in the United States and across the globe. The autonomy of women in the social arena in the U.S. has followed a considerable trajectory, from the Seneca Fall Convention in 1848 to Hillary Clinton’s announcement of her presidential candidacy on June 13, 2015. However, the heftiness of a glass ceiling seems overwhelming—and perishable, not only for women, but for those facing perpetual impediment due to gender and race.

Organized by Osman Can Yerebakan, the exhibition interprets the metaphorical conception of a glass ceiling, defining impalpable challenges imposed on certain groups of individuals, while materializing this expression through glass, a medium linked to women through ideas of decoration that has historically been dominated by men. Either working in sculpture to employ the fragile, yet resolute nature of glass or using its aesthetic luster in film or photograph to capture fluidity and resilience, the artworks manifest endurance and assurance in their statements, daringly embodying elegance and allure on the surface. Jes Fan’s wax dumbbells on pillowy glassbubbles comment on masculinity norms through the tension between two mediums, while AK Burns and Katherine Hubbard’s mixed media sculpture puts glass in conversation with other mediums to build an all-embracing narrative on memory and womanhood.
 
Osman Can Yerebakan is a curator and art writer based in New York. His writings appear on The Brooklyn Rail, Village Voice, ArtSlant, Art Observed, Hyperallergic, Filthy Dreams, Art New England, Artefuse, and Artspeak. Osman previously organized exhibitions at The Clemente Center, La MaMa Galleria, Radiator Gallery, Equity Gallery, AC Institute, Center for Book Arts, and Local Project.