Settling Through the Palm is a solo exhibition featuring Chicago based artist Mariel Harari. Exhibition runs February 19 – March 15, opening reception Friday, February 23rd, 6-9pm.

Settling Through the Palm addresses how memory lives in us. The exhibition is an immersive landscape that embodies sifting through stored memories to ask what nuance can be recovered under hindsight or bias and how can this uncovering help to process the past and in turn build more agency in the present.

Fragments hang from thin strands of thread, gently surrounding the viewer, fluctuating in and out of view like the past’s presence. Figures appear throughout the space examining memory’s impact on the body. Some are surreal amalgamations of portraiture mixed with drawn recollections and one is an oversized body, arching back to create a passageway. Fantastical plants act as a theatrical set portraying imagination’s role in mechanisms of mental escape. Holes are a motif throughout the show alluding to wounds, voids, openings and opportunity.

Included works are made with a mix of techniques inherent to Harari’s practice. Delicate encasements made of Alganyl, a translucent algae-based material Harari cooks in her studio. Hand painted fabric layered with paper, hair, beads, soil, ink and Alganyl, stitched onto armature to create semi-soft sculpture. Colored thread hand sewn or suspended in space. Through this material language, the exhibition explores points of permeability. Showing how the past lurks or surfaces in the body to merge with daydreams, perceptions and actions.

Artist Bio:
Mariel Harari is an interdisciplinary artist working in fiber, biomaterial, installation, performance, video, fashion, drawing and sculpture. Grounded in laborious processes and bright, tactile surfaces, her work explores and mimics relationships between memory, agency, escape and embodiment. Harari has been awarded residencies at Chicago Artists Coalition (CAC), Annas Projects, High Concept Labs, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and Vermont Studio Center. Her work has been featured in publications including Brooklyn Magazine, Sixty Inches From Center and Surface Design Association. Recent projects include exhibitions and performances at CAC, MDW Fair, Roman Susan, Comfort Station and Ignition Project Space. Harari was born and raised in Brooklyn, NY and currently lives and works in Chicago, IL.

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