Amy Zion


Curating, writing, editing, ++ 
2021
    Hessel Collection Cat. Rais.   
    Petrit Halilaj, Tate St. Ives
    LUMA ABCD, Luma Arles   
    Tyra Tingleff, Mousse
    Closer to Life, Hessel Museum   
    Frieze Talks, Frieze NY
2020
    Conversation with Ulrike Müller, Springerin
    The Conference of the Animals, Queens Museum
   Closer to Life, CCS Bard
   Comic Relief
   Erin Jane Nelson (review), frieze
2019
   Ardhje Award (jury), Zeta Gallery, Tirana
   CHART Talks, CHART, Copenhagen
   Gwangu Biennale (review), artagenda
   Busan Biennale (review), artagenda
   Frieze Talks, Frieze NY
   Havana Biennale (review), frieze
   Albania is not Cuba, El Paquete Seminale, Havana
2018
    Edi Hila (review), frieze
    Documents Magazine, Prada Mode, Art Basel Miami

    Aslı Çavuşoğlu, New Museum

    Abbas Akhavan, Skira
    Miriam Schapiro (review), Modern Painters
    Frieze Talks, Frieze NY
   Value Systems, Frieze NY
   Stephen Shore (review), frieze
  14th Lyon Biennial (review), Art in America
2017
     Rodrigo Hernandez, Flash Art
     Il Mondo Magico, 58th Venice Biennale
    Estate as Process, Art Journal 
    Omer Fast (review), frieze
    Abbas Akhavan, Villa Stuck, Munich
    Vikki Alexander (review), frieze
    aCCeSsions.org (Issue 4)
2016
   Antonio Lopez (review), frieze
    aCCeSsions.org (Issue 3)
    Art & ... , Triangle NY
    Regionalism vs. Provincialism, Momus
    Laura Poitras (review), frieze
2015
   Art Brut in America and Unorthodox (double review), frieze
A.U.T.O.E.N.U.C.L.E.A.T.I.O.N., Sismografo
   Mother Tongue, 57th Venice Biennale
   Slip of the Tongue, Punta della dogana, Venice
  Parachute Magazine: 1975–2007, Fillip 20
2014
   Property of a Lady, Witte de With Review
   Danh Vo: Go Mo Ni Ma Da, Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris and Dilecta
   Everything Must Go, e-flux
2013
   Visitor’s Talks, CCS Bard 
   Tell it to my Heart—Collected by Julie Ault, Museum für gegenwartskunst, Basel
   Tell it to my Heart—Collected by Julie Ault (Vol. I), Hatje Cantz
2012
    Documents Magazine: 1992–2004, Fillip 17
    Damnatio Memoriae, CCS Galleries, Bard College
2011
   DAAR, Centre d’Art Neuchatel and Nottingham Contemporary
    Danh Vo (review), Fillip
   Up North (review), Fuse


az@amyzion.com
Mark


Erin Jane Nelson, frieze issue 210


April 2020 Issue 210 of frieze


This review appeared in the April 2020 issue of frieze:

At Chapter, New York, collages on canvas and ceramic fuse references to Jewish mysticism and the history of craft

In Erin Jane Nelson’s solo exhibition at Chapter, five shaped, fabric-wrapped panels hang on mint green walls, encircling two ceramic vessels in the centre of the small, rectangular room. The ceramics are glazed and fired pinch pots studded with fungal-shaped growths, sitting atop white pedestals. Most of the panels are similarly covered in collaged images and shellacked with resin or epoxy: photographs of plants intermingle with pictures of men and women engaging in various spiritual activities, cartoons of mothers and their children, or black and white images of windowpanes. The panels and ceramics act as backdrops upon which Nelson attempts to establish connections between the natural world and the various cultural and religious orders we impose upon it. 

Erin Jane Nelson, Av, 2019, cotton pigment print, natural dyes, found photographs, and found fabric on panel, 1.6 × 1.2 m. Courtesy: the artist and Chapter, New York

The show’s title, ‘Shekinah’, is a Hebrew word with both theological and secular connotations. Half of the works on display (all 2019) are similarly titled after other biblical or ceremonial allusions, such as Av (father), Mikveh Melt (a ritualistic bath) and Beltane (a Celtic spring festival). Shekinah can mean dwelling or can refer to a divine light that emanates from a figureless God (a singular, masculine omnipresence in Judaism). Nelson’s works, in contrast, include many figures, mostly women, performing rites and rituals traditionally assigned to men: wrapping tefillin straps around their arms, reading Torah, wearing a prayer shawl and leading services. 

Erin Jane Nelson, Well 2, 2019, found figurines, photographs, and resin on glazed stoneware. Courtesy: the artist and Chapter, New York

Developed over several years, Nelson’s shaped panels and unfired ceramics highlight different aspects of her identity: her relationship with her mother, teenage selfies and photos of the environment formed constellations within earlier series, and remain leitmotifs in ‘Shekinah’. The exhibition’s central panel, Matriline, is stained with natural pigments and epoxy and covered in archival photos, pounded flowers and a cyanotype of a small, decorative ornament. Along with Av, it is the clearest homage to the artist Miriam Schapiro, whose ‘femmage’ approach to elevating craft and decoration to the status of fine art served as inspiration for the Pattern and Decoration movement. Deeply kitsch, chintzy found fabric in a 1980s palette of dark reds, purple and black stretches over the symmetrical, organically shaped frame of Av; at its centre, a square of white fabric has been collaged with a photograph of a man’s nude supine bust as he throws his bearded chin back in apparent ecstasy at the touch of anonymous hands, reaching into the frame to caress his shoulder. A mezuzah – an ornament that contains a prayer and marks the doors of Jewish homes – is placed over the wrist of one of the hands, like a bracelet. Above the white fabric, three images are collaged onto the leaf-patterned background like hieroglyphics: a profile of person wearing tefillin, a butterfly and a drawing of a snail.

Erin Jane Nelson, The Matriline, 2019, cotton pigment print, Hapa Zome, cyanotype, silver gelatin print, found photographs, mat board, natural dyes, eco epoxy, and found fabric on panel, 1.4 × 1.2 m. Courtesy: the artist and Chapter, New York

Schapiro used collotypes and patterns to call attention to the anonymous and unacknowledged contributions of women to art throughout history. Today, her work is not only institutionally sanctioned as part of the art-historical canon but – along with that of feminist peers such as Judy Chicago – has gained mainstream significance following the cultural turn towards feminism of the post-2016 #MeToo era. To take a similar approach today is far less transgressive and requires an adept handling of materials to build on the language that Schapiro and others spearheaded. What does it mean to make work within this aesthetic tradition today, and how do religion and ritual relate to the subject of décor and the elevation of craft to the realm of fine art? ‘Shekinah’ searches towards such a language to speak about the divine but remains caught in the material realm.
Mark