SCAFFOLD 2023 Curator’s Statement

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Scaffold brings together works by 37 NC Triangle-area women and non-binary artists. From emerging to established, self-taught to formally trained, together they represent a variety of histories and influences.

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In Scaffold, you’ll find several themes and resonances: the imaginary and abstract, the figurative and representational, the animal, hybrid, and cheeky, the textural and architectural, and spaces and materials traditionally associated with women. These themes can coexist in one work or work together to create space for conversation and to scaffold or provide support.  

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Scaffold invokes many eras of art history including color field, expressionism, surrealism, and the Pattern and Decoration movement of the 1970s and 80s. Movements wherein, against varied obstacles, women and gender nonconforming artists created important, influential, and enduring artwork. The works here are beautiful, dreamlike, provocative, sculptural, representational, figurative, and abstract. They represent the past, present, and point toward what’s possible.

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As you move through Scaffold, look for ways works scaffold each other the visual and nominal. Observe how lines and texture converse. The works ask us to consider how, for example, spaces and materials traditionally associated with women and marginalized peoples—kitchens, yarn, and cotton can be soft, complex, simple, pedestrian, and extraordinary all at once. Note the washes of color, the precision of a print or collage, or the gestural quality that conveys motion. Look for connections across form and style, for colors and materials that bring together works unexpectedly. Witness how these works take up space in more ways than one.

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-      Jameela F. Dallis, Ph.D., Scaffold Juror