C U R R E N T E X H I B I T I O N

INSTALLATION VIEWS • WORKS • ABOUT THE ARTISTS

A S P E N M A Y S | Webs, Windows and Templates

Webs, Windows and Templates are an intertwined series of work in progress photograms exploring my ongoing fascination with the tools involved in rendering space. In this case, I'm using architectural templates belonging to my father, uncle, and grandfather; I grew up with my father's drafting table and office in our home, and I have long been fascinated with templates and tapes needed to variously make shapes and structures visible and invisible. The photograms made using tape are iterations that derive from my collection of images of taping building windows in preparation for storms and other disasters. The intersecting lines of tape form a central starburst, an incidental shape resulting from the basic utility of the gesture. In my work, I have returned to this visual motif time and again to suggest cosmic expansion and collapse. The spider web photograms are also made from tape. I'm interested in the spiders' engineering and structure building as a way to introduce another timescale into the work. Each taped web is brought into the darkroom and sequentially pulled apart after each exposure until it disappears, making each one unique and unrepeatable. All works are silver gelatin; those works with color are made using fabric dyes to explore a palette inspired by the sky blues.

A R M I T A R A A F A T | Traces and Silences

Armita Raafat constructs, sculpts, and collage contemporary materials with traditional craft techniques and Islamic architectural forms, to continue these practices and their meanings in our current context. Her sculptures, site-specific installations, and handmade paper works rearrange, reassemble, and recombine forms, materials, and crafts to write a new chapter of their story.

Her handmade paper pieces, incorporate khoos doozi, a traditional technique of textile embroidery done by women from the Iranian island of Qeshm, into her work. The craft was originally used to embellish head scarves, wedding garments, and other clothing using a technique passed down between women from generation to generation. This work is a source of income for some of the island’s women and allows them to help support their households. She works directly with six women who create new khoos doozi according to her designs. Then she embeds fragments of it in richly pigmented, handmade paper and layers it with paper pulp, mesh, fabric, and mirrors to create a new form of weaving and embroidering within the sheet. The layering and reflective materials create an illusion of more depth and give the paper a sculptural feeling.

W O R K S

A B O U T T H E A R T I S T S

Aspen Mays (b. 1980 Charleston, SC) received her MFA in photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2009 and a BA in Anthropology and Spanish from The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill in 2002. Solo exhibitions of her work have been mounted by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL; Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, IL; Light Work, Syracuse, NY; and the Center for Ongoing Projects and Research, Columbus, OH. Mays was recently included in the exhibition Anna Atkins Refracted: Contemporary Works at the New York Public Library (2019). Mays was the recipient of a 2006 Rotary Fellowship and was a 2009 Fulbright Fellow. Her publication (made in collaboration with Dan Boardman) Where We’ve Been, Where We’re Going, Why? was shortlisted for the First Photobook Award by the Aperture Foundation and Paris Photo in 2016. She lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, where she is Assistant Professor at California College of the Arts.

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Armita Raafat is a New York-based sculptor and installation artist. Born in Chicago and raised in Iran, she earned a BFA from Al-Zahra University in Tehran and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited nationally and internationally including at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, the Noyes Museum of Art, New Jersey; Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York; High Noon Gallery; Art in Buildings; New York and Florida; HORSEANDPONY Fine Arts, Berlin; and Al-Zahra University, Tehran. Raafat received the Peter S. Reed Foundation grant for Sculpture and a NYFA fellowship for Crafts/Sculpture. She has been in residence at LMCC Swing Space, AIM at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, Winter Workspace at Wave Hill, and Workspace Program at Dieu Donné. Her work has been written about in publications such as Art in America, the Brooklyn Rail, artcritical, and others. She currently has a studio with the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in New York.

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Brea Souders is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist, often blending digital phenomena with physical objects and the handmade.  Her recent work explores concepts of selfhood, anonymity, and the virtual “other” within web-based culture. Looking at the historical, contemporary, and prospective imprints of technology through a female lens, the artist examines its impact on our bodies, identities, and perceptions of the world around us. Souders has exhibited her work nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Baxter St. at CCNY, Bruce Silverstein Gallery, and the Abrons Arts Center in New York, as well as at Foam Museum, Amsterdam, Netherlands; the Centre Photographique Rouen Normandie, France; PhMuseum, Bologna, Italy; and Peckham 24, London, UK.  She is the recipient of a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and National Arts Club Fellowship and was an artist-in-residence with Baxter St. at CCNY, Millay Arts, and the Artist House at St. Mary’s College, Maryland. Essays and reviews of her work have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, Artforum, Frieze, i-D, and The New Yorker. She is the author of the books Another Online Pervert, (MACK, 2023) and Brea Souders: Eleven Years (Saint Lucy Books, 2021).

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