Opening Reception – Saturday, September 25, 4-7PM: In order to to comply with the NYC vaccine mandate regulations outlined in the Key to NYC Pass, proof of vaccination and ID required for entry. Please read our COVID Courtesy Code prior to your visit – face coverings are still required for all visitors.
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Between Wounds and Folds draws together threads from the past fifteen years of Tamara Kostianovsky’s work and career, connecting issues of gender-based violence, personal memory, and ecological destruction through consumption, to create a complex and speculative ecosystem. Her soft, brutal sculptures combine discarded fabric with industrial materials, often borrowing forms from mutilated fauna and flora in various states of decay, including tree stumps, cow carcasses, and birds of prey.
This exhibition gathers four distinct bodies of work that explore two overlapping formal and conceptual constructs suggested by the title: the wound and the fold. Wounds take shape in the severed flesh of carcasses and truncated tree parts, while the folds compress fabric and flesh, incorporating one living being into another. Her sculptures are literally layered with tight folds of material, uniting the dense histories of consumption within the clothing industry together with the flesh of mutilated bodies. The fabric covering the surface of her works first originated from her own cannibalized wardrobe, and she later used material from her late father’s clothing and upholstery remnants. Kostianovsky viscerally positions the plant and animal forms in relation to human bodies, connecting the destruction of the earth by consumer waste to bodily harm.
Through alternating softness and aggression, her installations identify the nuances of violence that exist between a personal encounter and its normalization on a social and ecological level. Kostianovsky’s work asks for a re-imagination of human rights and environmental redemption models in order to consider the resultant violence as part of a larger, inseparable system. By creating immersive environments out of the remnants of consumer culture, her work goes beyond trauma enacted onto an individual organism to encompass the pervasive destruction by capitalist consumption on the natural world. Her works create a visual proposition for a future in which images of desecrated bodies are transformed into receptacles of regeneration and rebirth.
BIO:
Tamara Kostianovsky was born in Jerusalem, Israel in 1974, and grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the National School of Fine Arts “Prilidiano Pueyrredón” in Buenos Aires and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA. Kostianovsky is the recipient of distinguished awards including a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, and grants from New York Foundation for the Arts and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.
Her work has been exhibited at venues such as El Museo del Barrio, NY; The Jewish Museum, NY; Fuller Craft Museum, MA; Urban Institute for Contemporary Art, MI; The University of the Arts, PA; Nevada Museum of Art, NV, and many others. She has presented solo and group exhibitions in Italy, France, and Argentina.
Among many others, Kostianovsky’s artwork has been featured and reviewed in prestigious publications such as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, WBUR, The Village Voice, Marie Claire, Repubblica, El Diario New York, Colossal, and Hyperallergic.
The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Image above: Installation view of Tamara Kostianovsky, Between Wounds and Folds. Image courtesy of Smack Mellon. Photo: Etienne Frossard.
This exhibition is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, New York City Council Member Stephen Levin, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, and with generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Lily Auchincloss Foundation, Robert Lehman Foundation, Select Equity Group Foundation, many individuals and Smack Mellon’s Members.
Smack Mellon’s programs are also made possible with public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and with generous support from The Edward and Sally Van Lier Fund of The New York Community Trust, Jerome Foundation, The Roy and Niuta Titus Foundation, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation Inc., and Exploring The Arts. In-kind donations are provided by Materials for the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs/NYC Department of Sanitation/NYC Department of Education.
Space for Smack Mellon’s programs is generously provided by the Walentas family and Two Trees Management.
Smack Mellon would like to extend a special thanks to all of the individuals, foundations, and businesses who have contributed to the NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund.
