HERE I CAN CREEP SMOOTHLY ON THE FLOOR, AND FIT IN THAT SMOOCH AROUND THE WALL, SO I CANNOT LOSE MY WAY

GROUP SHOW: ALEXANDRA CARTER|NINA GERADA|JILL LAVETSKY|GALIA LINN|SARANA MEHRA|DANIELA SOBERMAN|CAMILLA TAYLOR
JULY 20-AUGUST 10, 2024

OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, JULY 20, 6-8PM

THEATRICAL PERFORMANCES: July 27th, 8pm & July 28th, 5:30pm (Doors Open 30 Minutes Before the Show for Gallery Viewing)

CLOSING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, AUGUST 10, 2-4PM

IN CONVERSATION WITH THE YELLOW WALLPAPER BY CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN—AND A PERFORMANCE OF YELLOW WALLPAPER 2.0 2020 WRITTEN BY JENNIFER MAISEL, DIRECTED BY EMILY CHASE, AND PERFORMED BY KAREN MALINA WHITE, WITH ROB NAGLE

The Middle Room is pleased to present Here I Can Creep Smoothly On The Floor, And Fit In That Smooch Around The Wall, So I Cannot Lose My Way, an unorthodox group exhibition of 2-D & 3-D works by artists Alexandra Carter, Nina Gerada, Jill Lavetsky, Galia Linn, Sarana Mehra, Daniela Soberman, and Camilla Taylor in our main gallery space. This exhibit will be on view from July 20 - August 10, 2024, along with a concurrent connected solo show in our project space entitled Things Nobody Knows But Me—featuring artist Cindy Craig.

Here I Can Creep Smoothly On The Floor, And Fit In That Smooch Around The Wall, So I Cannot Lose My Way is a is a group show of 7 artists, curated by Shannon Rae Fincke in dialogue with the early feminist literary classic The Yellow Wallpaper—written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and an immersive theatrical production of Yellow Wallpaper 2.0 2020—written by Jennifer Maisel, directed by Emily Chase, and performed by Karen Malina White, with Rob Nagle. This rebellious interdisciplinary curation centers on the intense interrelation between the startling works of Alexandra Carter, Nina Gerada, Jill Lavetsky, Galia Linn, Sarana Mehra, Daniela Soberman, and Camilla Taylor with The Yellow Wallpaper and Yellow Wallpaper 2.0 2020—a contemporary re-examination of the 1892 short horror story about a woman driven crazy by the rest cure for postpartum depression: now set in a covid-era quarantine. The engrossing conversation between this group exhibition in our main space, held in tandem with a concurrent solo show in our project space, the original text, and the new play inspired by it—contextualizes and illuminates the disturbing and oppressing ideas, constraints, isolation, suffering, alienation, fracturing, and resistance—detailed in the 19th century’s text to today’s still ever-present misinformed and patriarchal attitudes towards the mental and physical health of women.

Alexandra Carter lives and works in San Diego, California. Her figurative paintings using alternative media and surfaces emphasize a visceral mark and refer to the body permeating beyond its own boundaries explore the sensations of the female through themes of fertility, maternity, and the monstrous feminine—which emphasizes the female reproductive body as the core of the monstrous, pitting it against patriarchal views. Carter draws from her upbringing on a cranberry farm in New England as well as literature. In her paintings, figures perform a sumptuous dance between the maternal and the grotesque. The body is often subsumed in pregnancy, postpartum, or caregiving. She received an MFA from Goldsmiths University of London in 2015 and a BA from Rhodes College in Memphis in 2009.

Nina Gerada lives and works between London and Malta. Her sculptures explore the body, geology and time—and is highly tactile, inviting viewers to touch its surfaces, celebrating materiality and process by exposing abrasions, gouges, fingerprints and fault lines. Gerada’s small, intimate sculptures are an exploration of her changing body, made during the early years of motherhood. Modern ideas of feminine beauty are subverted as a reclamation of the body, agency and stories of womanhood. Born and raised in Malta, from an early age she had a rigorous and traditional training in art, then went on to study Art, Design and Architecture in London. Her art career has spanned different fields, and she has worked at a multitude of scales—including Production Design for film, Urban Design, Architecture, and Map Making.

Jill Lavetsky lives and works in Ithaca, NY. Her paintings and collages explore the subject of human connection through themes of motherhood, relationships, vulnerability, and tenderness represented by the tangling of bodies and interlacing of limbs. Using mixed-media, the interplay between control and the unexpected becomes a metaphor for the complexities of relationships. As a mother to young children, she investigates knotted and layered figures coming together to form one abstracted unit. There is holding on and letting go, there is love and fear, and there is a dance between autonomy and closeness. She received a Master's in painting from Florida Atlantic University in 2013, and has taught college, K-12 through community outreach, as well as incarcerated women.

Galia Linn lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Her sculptures, paintings, and site-responsive installations are informed by her childhood and early adulthood in Israel surrounded by relics and ruins of civilizations, from ancient archeological artifacts to the contemporary remains of armed conflicts. This experience instilled in her an intimate connection to past and present civilizations, as well as the understanding that each place is filled with complicated stories and relationships. Alongside her studio practice, she builds support structures for artists and creatives. Linn is the founder of Blue Roof, a multidisciplinary art hub located in South Los Angeles, which offers a place for artists to work in an environment that fosters creativity and community and to support accessible arts programs and meaningful arts experiences.

Sarana Mehra lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Her multidisciplinary art stems from long standing research into historic and extant systems of language, technology, and institutions for medicine and belief. As a disabled person whose very existence has relied upon almost constant medical interventions, many experimental—much of her life has been spent on the cutting edge of human progress. Stemming from personal experience as a “sick person,” she investigates the fine line between science and belief, acknowledging that despite our monumental scientific and medical advancements, the unease of disease still pulls at the threads of civilization. A bi-racial British-American artist, she earned her BFA from the Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art at the University of Oxford & her MFA from Central Saint Martins’ in London, UK. 

Daniela Soberman lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Her sculptural work incarnates primal volcanic acts of creation evoking brutalist architecture, Cycladic monuments, zen ink painting and expressionist film sets. Soberman is a self-taught artist who is influenced by her background as a first-generation Serbian-American and her travels in the former Yugoslavia. Her sculptures plunge the viewer into a realm of frenzied making, unmaking, and remaking as styrofoam, clay, and ink transform into weathered stone, petrified wood, fragments of ruined mazes, and glazed cookies bitten by gargantuan gods—emotions are messy things.

Camilla Taylor lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Their monochromatic and intensely introspective works on paper and sculpture, which utilize figurative and architectural forms, reflect the viewer’s internal lives as well as collective issues we experience as a society. An accomplished artist exhibiting in traditional gallery spaces, Taylor also creates installations in intimate and unusual locations, such as site-specific works in a swimming pool, desert garden, and other locations. Raised in Provo, Utah, in a small cult-like group led by their mother—at age 18, Taylor left and attended the University of Utah, receiving a BFA in 2006, and an MFA from California State University at Long Beach in 2011. Taylor teaches printmaking and sculpture at UCLA and Occidental College.