Ely Center Embodies Pandemic Art

Deborah Ramsey’s A Week in Times appears at first like an exercise in stillness. Pale colors, simple geometric shapes, an attention to texture. But the lines written in faint pencil across the bottom of each page tell a different story. ​“A new pier on Sunday in St. Petersburg, Fla. The state has one of the nation’s worst outbreaks,” reads one. ​“Many schools are unequipped to ventilate spaces properly,” reads another. A third pivots: ​“Portland, Ore. has had 50 consecutive days of protests.” A fourth: ​“Police officials say there were ​‘isolated cases’ of inappropriate force. But 64 videos show seemingly unwarranted attacks.” Each line is followed by a date from last year — a line pulled from that day’s headlines.

The urgency of the headlines puts the serenity of the art in another context; art not as an escape from one of the most tumultuous years in recent memory, but as a response to it, a way to build a sanctuary, to keep a level head, to draw strength to do whatever we need to do to get through it.

Ramsay is one of 49 artists with pieces in ​“Embody,” the latest exhibition at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art, running now through April 18. For curator Krista Scenna, the title comes from a common thread she found running through the art she included in the show.

“As I perused hundreds of submissions for what would become the exhibition ​‘Embody,’ it occurred to me that I was essentially viewing living artists’ response to our fraught moment. I reviewed the works in early February in preparation for an exhibition in March 2021: the one year anniversary of Covid’s known presence here in the United States. So, while this show isn’t an exhibition about the pandemic, it is most certainly a reflection of living artists’ attempt to grapple with this crisis (and maintain their practice) despite its ongoing repercussions in real time,” Scenna writes in an accompanying statement. ​“The desire for the tangible was resoundingly clear: the impulse to bring the physical into being; to give form to states of being, unsung heroes and unseen actions; and to restore the shapes and bodies that we formerly encountered, touched and experienced with abandon. ​‘Embody’ signals a return to the corporeal in all its fleshy, messy, imprecise and awkward glory. While we are still ensconced in a world dominated by necessary isolation and virtual interactions, these artists labor to remind us that our longing for physicality in real space and time is irrepressible and must be visibly acknowledged.”

In that light, KK Kozik’s Uphill Climb takes on a new meaning, as the figure has managed to get outside, to revel in a glorious fall day, but is also still very much alone — a keenly felt mix of emotions for those of us who may have found themselves spending more time in the woods during the pandemic to stay active and maintain perspective. Patricia Weise likewise contributes an exquisitely rendered painting of the pots in her dish drain. She finds worthy subjects close to hand to paint, but it’s also a reminder that if one is quarantining in one’s house, the range of possible subjects for still lifes can shrink.

Meanwhile, Soumiya Krishnaswami’s piece is an exercise in building a piece from a million tiny parts. The surface texture is created from probably thousands of hand-drawn, hand-painted whorls of gold and deep red. The result is a unified image that speaks of both creation and destruction; a painting with a tear from corner to corner, or is it a breakthrough?

Many have spoken about how the pandemic’s disruption and isolation have forced a confrontation with oneself, a reassessing of priorities. Few pieces in the exhibition encapsulate this, with some humor, like Jody MacDonald’s piece. In it, the bickering twins embody an argument you might have with yourself, in which a room in the privacy of your home becomes a stage on which you expose your own vulnerabilities.

In a similar vein, Rose Silberman-Gorn blends humor and horror, but turns outward, to the fires and panic in the street — partaking both from the political unrest that led to burning buildings and people running for their lives, but also the broader sense in which the pandemic and forces it brought with it gave a sense of how easily the world could be pulled apart around us.

Then there is Constance Brady’s Pray You Catch Me Listening, which summons hope and heartbreak in a single, ghostly image. It recalls George Floyd’s calling for his mother as he died. But it also suggests a stranger finding another stranger in need of help, and being able to administer it. It’s a moment of tragedy and a chance to be saved, all in one.