THE MERE THOUGHT that ordinary materials—rags, metal grommets, bandages, straw, linoleum, and other utilitarian objects—could be used to make art elevates their mundanity. Galisteo-based artist Harmony Hammond goes further in using these materials to counter the very idea of what art is, infusing her abstractions with social and political meaning.
“All materials have histories, have memories,” says Hammond, a longtime New Mexico resident and a prominent voice of the 1970s feminist art movement. “I like to think of my work as participating in the narrative of modern abstraction at the same time it interrupts and subverts that narrative.”
The artist, writer, and curator’s latest solo exhibition, FRINGE, opened at SITE Santa Fe in February and runs through May 19. (Admission is always free.) In the show, the mixed-media abstractions are in dialogue with her work from the 1970s, effectively blurring the line between two- and three-dimensional modes of artistic representation.
Hammond’s topographies use materials that can be associated with binding and restraint, damage to the body, and healing. In Bandaged Grid #1, a mixed-media canvas from 2015, bandages streak the surface like striations in rock. Red, like blood, oozes from grommets peppering the surface.
“Straps restrain, suggest binding, bandaging, bondage, but also embrace the painting body,” she says. “The fabrics are torn, frayed, pieced, and patched. There are loose ends. The seams are left showing. Cords and ropes suggest possibilities of connection. Paint is used to suture, is used as a poultice.”
Hammond’s materials and techniques are both aesthetic and symbolic. “Her work actively challenges and disrupts dominant historical narratives that have consistently excluded women and LGBTQIA+ individuals,” says SITE Santa Fe curator Brandee Caoba.
...
Read full article at newmexicomagazine.com.
