Stacia Yeapanis: Reliquaries for Clinging and Letting Go
@ Material
2025 W Belmont Ave, Chicago, IL 60618
Opening Sunday, December 12th, from 11AM - 2PM
On view through Sunday, January 9th
TITLE
Reliquaries for Clinging and Letting Go
EXHIBITION STATEMENT
In 2020—a chaotic year of tremendous anxiety—Stacia Yeapanis meticulously brushed her cats and de-pilled her knit jumpsuits, while watching TV and drinking La Croix. She obsessively documented lost masks on the ground, escaped into thrift stores daily and nervously arranged and rearranged her stuff in a futile attempt to control the uncontrollable. When she laid her 25-year-old jeep to rest, she mixed a gallon of its unique color—some see blue, others see purple—to hold onto what was already passing away.
The wall-hung sculptures in “Reliquaries for Clinging and Letting Go” (2021), use the jeep’s unique color as a unifying property for sculptures that marry the visual languages of domestic decor and sacred objects. In ambivalent expressions of anxiety, ritual and habit, Stacia combines thrifted objects intended to display souvenir collections with the material byproducts of her everyday life during lockdown. Shrouds made of deconstructed clothing, ritualistic collections of material waste and garlands made of lovingly-brushed cat fur, thread remnants, consumer packaging, broken jewelry, and lint from de-pilled knitwear are opportunities to reflect on the things we hold on to, both as ambivalent expressions of anxiety, ritual and habit and sacred grounding aids in the face of impermanence.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a Zoom screening of Stay Right Where You Are (2020), a remix of clips from over 50 scripted television shows made during lockdown. The video explores the multitude of emotional responses—both petty and profound—to life’s unexpected turns. The characters connect and argue across the boundaries of their shows, trying to cope with change and upheaval as the pandemic unfolds around them.
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Tags: Chicago, Material, Reliquaries for Clinging and Letting Go, Stacia Yeapanis
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