Artists embrace damage, care, and repair at Penland
What does it mean to mend? PERFECTION: a question of repair, opening at Penland Gallery this fall, celebrates the intimate and everyday qualities of repair as both a physical act and an emotional gesture. Guest curated by UK textile artist Celia Pym, the exhibition “aims to widen encounters with mending and mended works and challenge the idea of a perfect object or act of repair,” reads a press release. Borrowing its title from Kader Attia, whose work critiques ideals of flawless beauty and the erasure of scars, the exhibition highlights artists who “leave evidence of care and attention to the change in the object.” From hand-stitched cloth to softened wood, cracked ceramics, and salvaged fibers, participating artists transform timeworn materials into objects that hold memory, resilience, and tenderness. By embracing imperfection, PERFECTION reframes damage not as loss, but as a record of life lived.
PERFECTION: a question of repair: September 23-November 29
Penland Gallery / 3135 Conley Ridge Rd., Penland / penland.org/gallery