An "Open Mesh of Possibilities": Thinking Queerness with Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Archive
STUDIES IN CHAOS
After receiving her diagnosis of metastatic cancer, Sedgwick grew increasingly interested in notions of chaos, absence, infinity, and fragmentation. This case explores the different ways in which Sedgwick investigated these ideas in her experimental art and in her teaching.
Untitled. No Date. (*)
Spines are recurrent figures in Sedgwick’s art. On this textile piece, the image of the back and spine is separated onto four different pieces, which have been sewn and attached together to form a whole. Sedgwick displayed this piece on one of her hanging figures in her 1991 Floating Columns exhibition at the Rhode Island School of Design and her 2001 In the Bardo exhibition at SUNY Stonybrook.
Annotated Emily Dickinson poems. Circa 2000s.
This page is a compilation of Emily Dickinson poems, which Sedgwick annotated for the seminar “Zero, Infinity, Chaos, Sublimity,” which she co-taught with Joshua Wilner at the CUNY Graduate Center.
“Zero, Infinity, Chaos, Sublimity” Syllabus. Circa 2000s. Created by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick and Joshua Wilner.
Untitled clay monoprint. No Date.
Clay monoprinting is one artistic medium Sedgwick practiced as part of her experimentation with chaos and form. She learned the method from artist Mitch Lyons, who had developed this technique. Clay printing uses colored clay slip and texture to create a design. Each time a clay print is made, traces of the old print remain in the new design, creating a palimpsestic quality that intrigued Sedgwick.
Since clay monoprints cannot be fired in a kiln, a sealant is applied to preserve the print. Because some sealants off-gas chemicals, this item has been carefully framed to avoid any potential contamination of other objects.
Untitled (For beauty is a series of hypothesis – Suminagashi). No Date.
This textile piece features text from Marcel Proust on fabric dyed with suminagashi and shibori techniques. Suminagashi is another artistic medium which Sedgwick practiced as part of her experimentation with chaos and form. Suminagashi, or “floating ink,” is a Japanese marbling technique that suspends ink in thickened water. While it is easier to control the design with marbling techniques that suspend paint in water, the ink designs in suminagashi are a play between control and the chance movements of the water.
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