Curatorial Talk with Jennifer Lord

Join us for an in-person curatorial talk and exhibition tour with Jennifer Lord, the guest curator behind the 2024 Rough Gems exhibition, Dirty Abstraction. Led by Union Hall’s Chief Curator Esther Hz, we will be discussing the concept, inspiration and selected works in the exhibition.

Can’t make it? This event will be recorded and posted on Union Hall’s website afterward.

Dirty Abstraction proposes an abstraction that communicates and contains cultural, ecological, political, and/or spiritual content. It is abstraction that pushes against traditional notions of pure form and into critical content. The work here is contingent, intersectional, and coded, interjecting shifting nuance. Each artist in the show has a different approach to how they make the content of their work legible, to whom, and to what degree they allow their work to be illegible. The exhibition explores the contradiction of does it matter / it doesn’t matter how much the viewer gets.

Dirty Abstraction is on view through February 10, 2024. Union Hall’s gallery hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 12-6 pm.

Jennifer Lord (she/they) is an artist, researcher and taijiquan teacher in the Yang lineage. They received their BA from Naropa University and are currently an MFA candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They study and teach T’ai Chi Ch’uan with Rocky Mountain T’ai Chi Ch’uan. They are a student and practitioner of Sogetsu Ikebana (Japanese flower arranging). Lord creates improvisatory 2.5 dimensional collages with remnant and hand-made fabric in dialog with queer and feminist hand-making traditions. Themes of harmony, precarity, and sensuality express their devotion to the natural world in this time of climate chaos. Recent exhibitions include Little Creatures at Boulder Public Library, Winter Blooms at Alto Gallery, Cryptic Perfume at Razzle Dazzle Museum, and Rainbow Above the Ruins with Noah Travis Phillips at Dateline Gallery. Bigger View(s): Earth, Anthropocene, Beauty, an exhibition curated by Lord, was part of the citywide event One Book One Boulder in 2021. Lord recently completed a residency at Mountain Water, a land restoration project that combines contemplative practice with creative expression. They are always reading several books concurrently. Born in Salt Lake City, they live, work, and teach in Boulder, Colorado. Their work is held in several private collections.