Opening Reception on Saturday, September 14th from 5:00-8:00pm. Free to the public.

About:
Erica Fitzgerald’s work exaggerates physical touch and material manipulation to emphasize the similarities women share with malleable changing resources. Using performative rituals, she maneuvers her body to react quickly to a soft material, like clay or fiber, which can be molded but also hardened, ripped or shattered by touch, force, misuse, or heat. Through the process of pressing, beating, touching, and scraping with fingers, she is able to apply enough force to the clay and fibers to imprint actions upon it, often violently.

Fitzgerald uses these works to investigate American systems that fetishize abuse and rape culture to strip bodies of their right to reproductive healthcare. She focuses on gendered labor practices used in ancient crafts, hand weaving, and raw soil movement to highlight the link between gender and consumer earth stress evident in the depletion of natural resources and human rights.