Elaine Reichek: The Eye of the Needle

Elaine Reichek (American, born 1943), Painted Blackfoot, 1990, knitted wool yarn, oil on gelatin silver print, 79 x 73 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Zach Feuer Gallery, New York.

Boca Museum of Art

A survey of works by conceptual artist Elaine Reichek will open at Boca Museum of Art on May 3, 2014. Born in New York, Reichek uses embroidery to explore aesthetics in art. “The Eye of the Needle” delves into the translation, and mistranslation, of artifacts and images by outside cultures and colonizers. Reichek finds, enlarges and colors ethnographic and architectural photographs, pairing them with her own hand-knitted interpretations. She deliberately misreads the images, raising questions about what information can be acquired from a photograph that’s viewed by a culture far removed from the original context.

Ethographic photos of indigenous Fuegians, the native inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego in South America, are altered to make their body-paint pictographs appear as abstract designs in the bright reds, yellows and blues of modernist paintings. Photography of dwellings and shelters from tribal cultures receive a similar treatment as the artist raises questions about whether the medium is an objective document or truly a reflection of the Western beliefs, morals and fantasies from which it’s derived.

The translation from photograph into the incongruous medium of knitting further disassembles the subject and echoes the way information is passed between cultures that shape it along the way. The use of knitting and embroidery (often denigrated as simply craft) is central to Reichek’s work. As she said, “The meaning of an artwork is always bound up with its media and processes and their history.” “The Eye of the Needle” is on view through July 27, 2014.