Tightly Knit, Loose Fit

Anna Adler, Matthew Ballou, Ashlynn Browning, Rachel Burgess, Matthew Burrows, Barbara Campbell Thomas, Frank Chang, Madelaine Corbin, Oscar Rene Cornejo, Zachary Fabri, Debora Faccion Grodzki, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Fidencio Fifield-Perez, Manuela Gonzalez, Katarina Janečková Walshe, Yasemin Kackar-Demirel, Judy Glanzman, Michele Landel, Graham Lister, Sharon Louden, Jorge Lucero, Leeza Meksin, Natalija Mijatovic, Tahila Mintz, Jean Gray Mohs, Sean Noonan, Helen O'Leary, Olivia von Pock, Erin Raedeke, Susanne Ring, Anne Schreiber, Angela Renee Shaffer, Mika Sperling, Maria Vargas Aguilar, Markus Vater, Rudy Vavra, Vuth Lyon, Lesley Wamsley Tightly Knit, Loose Fit is an exhibition exploring the dynamics of language and artmaking as interconnected aspects of praxis. The original term of praxis, as coined by Paulo Freire, describes the perpetual process of making and then making meaning. Its concept is fundamental to the mission of the Artist Praxis podcast, founded by the curators Debora Faccion Grodzki and Sarah Arriagada, and central to the conversations they conducted there with each of the exhibiting artists. The conversations gathered in the Artist Praxis podcast explore everything artists work with, from materials to thoughts, from dreams to gestures, from feelings to tools. The exhibition title, Tightly Knit, Loose Fit, alludes to the process of stringing, piecing, or weaving together thoughts, practices, and materials into cohesive entities, much like the exhibited artworks and published interviews are woven into this public exhibition. Tightly Knit, Loose Fit includes 38 artists from diverse backgrounds and artistic practices. Adding to the multicultural, multilingual, and multipersonal conversations in the podcast, the exhibition honors the sovereignty of human creativity by bringing together artworks that show the gaps and pitfalls of language as well as the pauses and discordances in artistic practices. Though based in the United States, Brazil, Cambodia, Germany, Scotland, England, and France, a majority of the exhibiting artists have their immediate roots elsewhere: in Russia, China, Ireland, Serbia, Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Turkey, Vietnam, Slovakia, Ukraine, the African diaspora, and the First Nations of these lands. Within this dense multicultural, multilingual, and multipersonal fabric, Tightly Knit, Loose Fit honors the sovereignty of the space in between the embodied and the materialized. With the option to use the podcast interviews with individual artists as audio guides, exhibition visitors become participants in the unfolding of praxis. This multisensory experience shines a light not only on the works on display, but also on what it means to make art today, and on the human dynamics involved in making sense of creativity as a global community.