China Marks’s exhibition, ‘Lucid Perturbations: The Sewn Drawings and Books of China Marks,’ is on display at Zane Bennett Contemporary Art in Santa Fe, NM, showcasing over 200 pieces from her sewn creations. This extensive collection highlights the artist’s dreamlike storytelling. Throughout her career spanning 23 years, Marks has crafted more than 600 sewn artworks, and this exhibition, running from May 15 to July 11, delves into the complexities of her artistic vision, exploring themes of power, human psychology, and societal issues.
The exhibition title references Marks’s insight that each piece maintains clarity amid the fabric’s disruptions, reflecting the coherent imagery within her often fragmented and puzzling works. Marks states, ‘I am after as complex a truth as possible. My drawings reflect the world in all its glory, horror, and absurdity — its workers and slugs; sleepwalkers and prophets. Who is in charge, and who suffers because of that? Why does the past keep biting us in the ass? What does it mean to be in love?’
In 2000, at the age of 59, Marks transitioned from painting, printmaking, and sculpture to focus solely on sewing, creating scenes that blend life’s joys and contradictions in a uniquely resonant manner. Her previously private universe now invites viewers into a realm where Western cultural themes are reimagined and critiqued, exploring narratives of racial violence, geopolitical conflicts, and human relationships with a tragicomic lens.
Carina Evangelista, gallery director at Zane Bennett, describes Marks’s work as fostering ‘a literary kind of pareidolia,’ where viewers discern narratives and messages within seemingly random patterns. Marks describes her art as ‘an accumulation of truths that are remarkably honest and sometimes cut to the bone,’ using fabric and thread as her medium for narrative storytelling. She views ‘sewing/drawing as the essential transformative agent, an uncanny truth-teller.’
For more information, visit zanebennettgallery.com.
