Material as memory

Working with fabric necessitates a certain type of intimacy. How you move through the world is punctuated by what you were wearing; fabric changes you, it can define your day. Fabric, whether it’s worn or transformed, can thus become a complicated act of memory and storytelling.

“A thread through a past life,” up at Middle Child Gallery, centers this intimacy—this unique connection between material and flesh. With works by Chicago artist Udita Upadhyaya and Kansas City-based artist Nina Littrell, the exhibition takes fabric as a guidepost to think through our pasts and untold futures.

Littrell’s work merges a long-held interest in quilting with her own familial histories, and critically engages the tolls fast fashion takes upon its mostly female workforce and the environment. Littrell’s Reclining Cunt (2023) braids these lines of inquiry to position the quilt as a form of portraiture; swirls of fabric surround a central nude figure that looks out to meet the viewer’s gaze.

Questions of family, of absence, and presence also haunt Upadhyaya’s practice. With fabric from her grandmother’s tailor, acquired during visits to family in India, Upadhyaya thinks of material as a means to explore dislocation and connection; she crafts female lineages both real and imagined. Her 2022 star strings is a work of utmost delicacy. Blossoms of fabric form constellations of color on a field of black, alongside spidery embroidered script.

The friction between the body and material is malleable in this exhibition; it’s also fleshy, visceral, and full of wonder.

“A thread through a past life”Through 9/17: Thu 1-5 PM, Fri 5-9 PM and by appointment, Middle Child Gallery, Mana Contemporary, 2233 S. Throop, Room 950, middlechildgallery.org, [email protected]

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