The Call of the Great Indoors
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica64120221584Abstract
In February-March, 2021, Hermes, a gallery in Halifax, Nova Scotia about the size of two large living rooms showed an exhibition called ESCAPE / The Great Indoors. Curated by Halifax’s then Young Curator Liuba González de Armas, the exhibition brought together “cozy, bright, and colourful explorations of domestic space by four emerging artists” working with textiles, painting, installation, and social practice. In this piece, I explore ESCAPE / The Great Indoors through interviews with the curator and one of the artists, its written documentation, and my responses to the pieces. The exhibition’s playful retreat into the inner sanctums of our homes—our bathrooms, bedsides, and bellies—seems to be a panacea for the agoraphobic times of the pandemic. However, it also presents a soft pandemic politics, playful but stitched through with threads of both anxiety and solidarity. The curator’s statement stresses the social over the solo: “the artists draw meaning from connections with themselves, others, culture, and the more-than-human.” ESCAPE / The Great Indoors folds back the screen around private space to invite the public in to listen to the artists’ stories and call up their own.
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