"Amniotic Ambiguity: Comparative Embryology to Queering a Space" in Augustana College's Wallenberg Hall -- February 8 through August 20.
Exhibit: Sunday, February 8, through Thursday, August 20
Augustana College's Wallenberg Hall, 3520 Seventh Avenue, Rock Island IL
A fascinating collaborative art installation that invites viewers to return to a place before definition, Amniotic Ambiguity: Comparative Embryology to Queering a Space will be on display in Augustana College's Wallenberg Hall February 8 through August 20, artists Maggie Adams and Aykeem Spivey demonstrating how, in this period of incubation, black-or-white thinking is disrupted by a bold labor of love.
In collaboration with friends and peers alike, Adams and Spivey have created a space in which Amniotic Ambiguity viewers may reconsider their relationships to humanity. Using the embryo, a seemingly alien yet universal form, the artists are encouraging audiences to empathize with ambiguity, assessing the necessity of legibility for queering a space.
To queer a space is to consider different perspectives and resist the compulsion to authorize hierarchies between self and other. Difference is not only welcome in our space, but it is also vital to maintaining it. Adams and Spivey take an intermedia approach in pursuit of celebrating difference by melding painting, sculpture and ceramics. Each is chosen for its capacity to provide a sense of bodily tactility and emotionality, and to symbolize the interior of the womb. Together, they create an immersive environment that welcomes viewers to sit with discomfort and reevaluate their relationship to empathy, both spiritually and physically.
In their biography, Maggie Adams states that they were "born in small town Missouri and raised in their father's MRI clinic, cementing a fascination with the human body at a formative age. They received their BFA in Ceramics and Fibers from Truman State University in 2021, with a minor in Art History.
“After graduation, they lived as a resident artist at the Osage Arts Community in Belle, MO and spent nearly two years managing the clay studios at Access Arts – a non-profit community art school in Columbia, MO – where they deepened their love for teaching. They exhibit their artwork nationally in juried and invitational shows. Adams is currently living in Iowa City as a second-year Ceramics MFA candidate at the University of Iowa, continuing to pursue their passions for teaching and making art about queer identity through allegories of digestion and self-cannibalization.
In their Artist Statement, Aykeem Spivey says: “I am a contemporary philosopher of line, color, and rhythm. Playing and dancing with paint, repurposed fabric, found ephemera, and ceramics to explore is-ness: a transcendental state of being that dissolves fixed social constructs into fluid, balanced, and activated compositions.
“I play with scale and form, assessing the potency of a composition in relation to the space it occupies. I play with materials, developing a sensitive relationship to their physical demands and limitations. I play with line and color as a practice of patience. Moving between expressive, full-body mark making, to a gentle hand. With color, I am informed by rhythmic patterns of pushing and pulling that I enjoy discovering, disrupting, or distilling to their core – often in conversation with mid-to-late 20th-century expressionism and minimalism.
“Similarly, rhythm extends this dialogue – where the body, line, and color operate as tools for dissolving social constructs into conversations with jazz, R&B, and hip-hop culture. In these spaces, dance and music serve as tools of resistance, transcendence, and celebration. From music to movement to breath, the hand meets each breath with a stroke, echoing the rhythm of each composition. Through this interaction, the work arrives at is-ness, where presence is not imposed, but felt.”
A free public reception for Amniotic Ambiguity: Comparative Embryology to Queering a Space will take place in Augustana College's Wallenberg Hall on February 13 from 6 to 8 p.m., and the exhibit itself will be on display from February 8 through August 20. For more information, contact Jennifer Ong at jennigerong@augustana.edu and visit Augustana.edu.
