Show and Tell: Sarah Ujmaia: POSTPONED

Sarah Ujmaia’s Care Label in Cathedral Cabinet, runs concurrent to her exhibition at Blindside, Show and Tell. Together, the shows act as a meditation on the contextualization of art through in-situ-text.

Care labels detail where and how a garment is made. They share a list of materials. Discrete in size, they aim to provide easy to read instructions through their own pictorial language by employing instructional signs and symbols—an iron or washing machine, for example. Ultimately, they contextualize and aid one’s understanding of a garment.

Show and Tell, paradoxically, questions this device, both within the realization of works, and in the deliberate exclusion of wall text. This body of work extends on Ujmaia’s interest in how meaning can be concealed or coded within a lexicon, and in what one chooses to conceal or reveal. Alongside one another, there is an effort to speak to the extent to which we do, or don’t, read and engage with art within Western Epistemologies. Conversely, Ujmaia’s second instalment of Care Label, seeks to act as a form of in-situ-text for Show and Tell, while being slightly removed from the site of the works.

The material explorations produced for Show and Tell ultimately seek to highlight the complexities of self determination. While drawing persists as an important component, a pressure surfaces within these compositions through the pull toward other mediums within the visual language. Representativeness and clarity feel distant, yet simultaneously palpable. The two shows operate by being hospitable on one hand, and withholding on another.

Cathedral Cabinet is located on the ground floor of the Nicholas Building.

Image | Sarah Ujmaia, 'Show and Tell', 2020 | Courtesy the artist.