ARC Gallery is an internationally recognized exhibition space that has been an integral part of the Chicago art scene since its inception in 1973. Founded during the women’s movement as an alternative to the mainstream gallery system, ARC is one of the longest running art spaces of its kind in the country. As a non-profit, woman artist-run cooperative, ARC continues its feminist tradition by providing exhibition opportunities for professional and emerging artists working in all media based on excellence of artwork, without discrimination toward ethnicity, race, gender, age, class, religious, sexual or political orientation.
Image: ARC Gallery, 2022. Image by Nathan Keay
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ATHENA FUND EXHIBITION WINNER
I come from a lineage of four generations of female artisans, with a strong tradition of lace-making in Xiaoshan, China. Lace, with its intricate yet fragile structure, carries a tension between visibility and absence, labor and ornamentation, history and transformation. Lace-making is not just about preserving techniques; it’s about understanding them as shifting, unstable, and deeply connected to the people who practice them.
Thread’s Return along the Equinox draws from the most elemental act in lace-making: the looping of a single thread. A loop does not simply repeat—it returns in order to continue. This circular rhythm echoes the dual life of rural women: working the fields by day, making lace by night. These alternating modes of labor—earth and hand, public and private—are woven into the fabric of shared memory and survival. The equinox is not the subject but the structure of the work. A moment of balance between light and dark that reflects a cyclical conception of time, where dyed threads and woven deviations reflect a tension between order and disruption.
Thread’s Return along the Equinox asks how traditions continue— by preserving sameness or through adaptation? Lace becomes a way of holding time, of returning through making.
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