Finding the Words

Weeks Gallery, Jamestown Community College

February 8 - March 21, 2024

This group exhibition explores the connections between words, coping, memory, and loss through works using text in various media and languages. In the most difficult or sublime of moments, it can be hard to communicate our deepest emotions. Often these experiences, rooted in or worn by the body, are in need of catharsis. These artists use text in the form of lists, poetry, prose, and protest in an attempt to heal, connect, and…find the words.

Indira Allegra gives us the tools to put our shared experiences into words through their interactive website, the Grammar of Grief Handbook. In cascading ribbon installations, Valaria Tatera uses minimal color and text to underscore the vital importance of “Justice” and “Nibi” (water), calling attention to unanswered violence against indigenous women and the earth. Raheleh Filsoofi questions the idea of home and homeland through the dissonant stories of migrant women. Similarly, Mercedes Jelinek’s mixed media photography installation bathes us in the familiar feeling of alienation that occurs when our words get lost in translation as a foreigner.

 Marisa Finos gives ceramic form to the lost-then-found grocery lists we’ve all misplaced or encountered, reminding us of our own lost words and the fallibility of memory at any age.  SaraBeth Post Eskuche’s cast glass word jumbles are shaped in childlike innocence but steeped in longing. Through community-based workshops, Aram Han Sifuentes helps others use their words and the clothes on their backs to create urgent, subversive, and portable calls to justice.

Photos: Erika Diamond

Special thanks to Colin Shaffer, Managing Director of Weeks Gallery, for curatorial cheerleading and exhibition install.