Corazones Cosidos project
In the Fall of 2022, Upstart Modern will present Corazones Cosidos, an online exhibition of new works by Bay Area-based artist Deborah Lawrence Schafer. This series finds the artist exploring the nature of trauma and healing and reflecting on how we navigate our interior world of emotional suffering. Schafer’s new works will be presented online via photographs of individual works, video, and installation views of the same works hanging in the Upstart Modern exhibition space in Sausalito, California.
The project encompasses-- the series Corazón Cosido which includes 24 pigment printed hearts which she shot with a bow and arrows and then mended with thread made with 24k gold; the photograph series Reconciliation; and a series of two videos Viajera I and II. In the photographs and videos, Schafer stands in as an archetype to represent the human journey inevitably touched by sorrows, trauma and suffering and a contemplation on how to create healing within ourselves.
The Corazones Cosidos works are detached from a distinct time or place to reflect the way in which memories of our past sorrows and the pain that remains are amplified times of stillness, and reunites our individual suffering with a human condition that is universal. In this context, Schafer draws focus on the universality of our suffering and presents our own sorrows as a means to feel empathy for the suffering of others.
Schafer’s choice to mend the hearts with thread made of gold intends to convey the idea that beauty exists in darkness and creates a sort of map on each heart tracing the closing the wounds. This gesture is also a nod to the Japanese art of Kintsugi in which a broken ceramic is repaired with gold and made more beautiful; that when we do heal from an injury, or a trauma, there can be wisdom, experience or some sort of beauty. And the idea that we are ultimately responsible for our own emotional suffering.
In the Fall of 2022, Upstart Modern will present Corazones Cosidos, an online exhibition of new works by Bay Area-based artist Deborah Lawrence Schafer. This series finds the artist exploring the nature of trauma and healing and reflecting on how we navigate our interior world of emotional suffering. Schafer’s new works will be presented online via photographs of individual works, video, and installation views of the same works hanging in the Upstart Modern exhibition space in Sausalito, California.
The project encompasses-- the series Corazón Cosido which includes 24 pigment printed hearts which she shot with a bow and arrows and then mended with thread made with 24k gold; the photograph series Reconciliation; and a series of two videos Viajera I and II. In the photographs and videos, Schafer stands in as an archetype to represent the human journey inevitably touched by sorrows, trauma and suffering and a contemplation on how to create healing within ourselves.
The Corazones Cosidos works are detached from a distinct time or place to reflect the way in which memories of our past sorrows and the pain that remains are amplified times of stillness, and reunites our individual suffering with a human condition that is universal. In this context, Schafer draws focus on the universality of our suffering and presents our own sorrows as a means to feel empathy for the suffering of others.
Schafer’s choice to mend the hearts with thread made of gold intends to convey the idea that beauty exists in darkness and creates a sort of map on each heart tracing the closing the wounds. This gesture is also a nod to the Japanese art of Kintsugi in which a broken ceramic is repaired with gold and made more beautiful; that when we do heal from an injury, or a trauma, there can be wisdom, experience or some sort of beauty. And the idea that we are ultimately responsible for our own emotional suffering.
Not only is there no attempt to hide the damage, but the repair is literally illuminated... a kind of physical expression of the spirit of mushin.... Mushin is often literally translated as ‘no mind, [無心].’ but carries connotations of fully existing within the moment, of non-attachment, of equanimity amid changing conditions. ...The vicissitudes of existence over time, to which all humans are susceptible, could not be clearer than in the breaks, the knocks, and the shattering to which ceramic ware too is subject. This poignancy or aesthetic of existence has been known in Japan as mono no aware, a compassionate sensitivity, or perhaps identification with, [things] outside oneself.
—Christy Bartlett, Flickwerk: The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics
Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything -- anger, anxiety, or possessions -- we cannot be free.
—Thich That Hanh
—Christy Bartlett, Flickwerk: The Aesthetics of Mended Japanese Ceramics
Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything -- anger, anxiety, or possessions -- we cannot be free.
—Thich That Hanh
Reconciliation no. 5 from the Corazones Cosidos project, 2021. Limited Edition of 3 + A.P., Digital photograph on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Baryta Satin, 8 x 12 and 12 x 18 inches
|
Reconciliation no. 1 from the Corazones Cosidos project, 2021. Limited Edition of 3 + A.P., Digital photograph on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Baryta Satin, 8 x 12 and 12 x 18 inches
|
Reconciliation no. 4 from the Corazones Cosidos project, 2021. Limited Edition of 3 + A.P., Digital photograph on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Baryta Satin, 8 x 12 and 12 x 18 inches
|
Reconciliation no. 2 from the Corazones Cosidos project, 2021. Limited Edition of 3 + A.P., Digital photograph on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Baryta Satin, 8 x 12 and 12 x 18 inches
Reconciliation no. 3 from the Corazones Cosidos project, 2021. Limited Edition of 3 + A.P., Digital photograph on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Baryta Satin, 6 x 9 and 8 x 12 inches
|
Reconciliation no. 7 from the Corazones Cosidos project, 2021. Limited Edition of 3 + A.P., Digital photograph on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Baryta Satin, 6 x 9 and 8 x 12 inches
|
Reconciliation no. 6 from the Corazones Cosidos project, 2021. Limited Edition of 3 + A.P., Digital photograph on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Baryta Satin, 6 x 9 and 8 x 12 inches
|
Still from video art, Viajera I, 2021, from the Corazones Cosidos project. Single channel video, 30 fps, color with mono sound
Still from video art, Viajera II, 2021, from the Corazones Cosidos project. Single channel video, 30 fps, color with mono sound