THESIS EXHIBITION: March 29 - April 1

Opening Reception: March 31, 6 - 8pm

Dishwashing, 2022, monotype, video monitor, soap, steel wool, variable dimensions

Soft Steel, Velvet Heat (detail), 2022, velvet burnout, steel rod, clothes pins, variable dimensions

Artist Statement

Through the language of printmaking, my practice explores the movement of time and the flaws of memory as they manifest within my own auto-ethnographic studies of family narratives. Considering how a print functions as a Multiple, I seek connections between the physical repetition of process and the action of repeating a memory. The accidental and purposeful interruptions that I create separate prints from the same original image. This process mirrors many of the ways in which a memory is never recalled the same way twice. Imagery is sourced from a combination of my family archive and records of my own daily actions of repetition. These repetitious acts manifest in the daily activities of maintaining a home, such as doing laundry, washing dishes, or making the bed. Intertwined with this research is a consideration of gender, reflecting the history of matrilineal lines, the feminine role of family arbiter, and the ways in which I accept and reject those roles.  By animating unique prints and monotypes, I am introducing prints as a time-based media, simultaneously capturing the repetition in creating the objects and the separations between each frame. Through the collective display of moving and still images, I invite the viewer to consider both the haptic and visceral experience of recollection. 

More information about Ally Kotarsky available at allysonkotarsky@gmail.com

All photos credited to the artist.