Decapitation and other limiting conditions

Events

Through repetition and arrangement of images into quilts, bed spreads, and other photographic objects, Amy Buehler’s new work addresses limitation and constraint. Challenging both external and internal questions of power and powerlessness, her work evokes the processes of pattern-making: having the same experiences that inevitably produce the same results; and patterns of behaviours that lead to patterns of repeated concerns. Buehler’s work responds to limiting conditions that become embedded in everyday lives, ranging from discrimination of women to questions around dementia and ageing. Her recurring images speak to vernacular practices that have traditionally been restricted to the realm of decorative arts and women's work: quilting, embroidery, and ornamentation, as well as the nature of photography. These activities are so deeply embedded into the everyday life through the repetition that their aesthetic or political agency is often rendered invisible. By filling these common forms with reiterations of haunting images of insects, disembodied clothes, and store mannequins, Buehler explores their unwritten negotiations of power, shaping these welcoming and comfortable environments into ones of unease.