Details
FreeDate(s)
Sep 6, 2024 – Jan 15, 2025
Contact
boxoffice@irishartscenter.org
888-616-0274
Location
Irish Arts Center
726 11th Avenue
Hell's Kitchen, NYC
Overview
The act of knotting and unknotting communicates a vivid dichotomy; whether to weave the fragile and create strength, or to disentangle, make free, or simplify. Through the work of Alice Maher and Rachel Fallon across a range of media and processes—textile, charcoal, steel, embroidery, crochet—this exhibition explores these competing iconographies. A building-wide pattern of knotting and unknotting.
Maher and Fallon first connected as activist-artists during the historic Repeal the 8th campaign, which legalized abortion in the Republic of Ireland in 2018. From 2019-2021, they collaborated on The Map, a monumental textile sculpture that imagines the life, legacy, and mythology of Mary Magdalene and her impact on women’s lives.
The same meticulous nature of The Map is brought to The Mantle, a collaborative textile piece created specifically for the Irish Arts Center atrium, hand sewn, embroidered, and crocheted. The Mantle uses color, shape, image, and language to celebrate the resilience of communities to subvert and push back against societal restraints.
The first floor also contains new site-specific work from both artists. From Maher, a giant charcoal braid, Untying, flings itself across the south wall in a powerful invocation of spatial reclamation and bodily release. Fallon’s Measure by Knots is a three-dimensional crocheted drawing alluding to migratory experience, distance, and fragmentation of language.
Two more works place both artists in a space to contemplate their role as citizens. I Am Present/Jelen Vagyok documents collaborative performances by Fallon and Hungarian artists and activists that highlight social inequalities, systemic violence, and the lack of female and queer representation in public spaces in Budapest. Memento Civitatem includes a set of 21 major or Arcana tarot cards, designed and hand colored by Maher. A collaboration with Jamie Murphy, the work embodies the social issues that concerned early citizens at the start of the new Republic of Ireland, and the cycle that continues to raise concern over these same social issues, over 100 years later.
Gallery Hours
Sep 30—Nov 13
Mon—Wed // 6pm to 8pm
Saturdays from 1pm to 5pm
Oct 5
Oct 12
Oct 19
Oct 26
Nov 2
If you would like to view the works outside of these hours please email rachael@irishartscenter.org.
PAST EVENTS
Irish Arts Center and Visual Artists Ireland present: Untying the Knots, Online Artist Talk // Thursday, September 25
DIY Aprons of Power Performance // Saturday, September 28
Presented with generous support from Culture Ireland.
Featuring
Our Supporters
Irish Arts Center programs are supported, in part, by government, foundation, and corporate partners including Culture Ireland, the agency for the promotion of Irish arts worldwide; public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the Mayor’s Office and the New York City Council; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature; Howard Gilman Foundation; Tourism Ireland; the Jerome L. Greene Foundation; the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Foundation; the Charina Endowment Fund; the Ireland Funds; the Shubert Foundation, Inc.; the Arnhold Foundation; the Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation; the Irish Institute of New York; the Society of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick, New York; Northern Ireland Bureau; Invest NI; CIE Tours; M&T Bank; the Dead Rabbit; the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Consulate of Ireland in New York; and thousands of generous donors like you.
