Opening Reception: Julia Curran: Portals

She sees herself as a story-teller, and her inescapably physical work challenges societal illusions that the brain is separate from the body, and from the rest of the natural world. Her latest work holds up a mirror to the shadow-self, inviting us to examine “our relationship with our environment and with ourselves, and the mirrors we look into and portals we go through to find that,” Curran says.

Her work in this show combines a breadth of techniques, including silkscreen, lithograph and monotype prints, as well as mixed-media collage paintings. Curran thinks of printmaking as a socio-politically conscious tradition:

“…a way to disseminate knowledge through books and images, the rich history of hand printed protest posters, printmakers gathering around shared community presses and studios, and the nature of prints as editions, where artists can print multiple unique copies of a work that are more accessible to a wider audience in terms of both number and price point,” Curran says.

Her work brings dark humor to the current catastrophic times, poking fun at human hubris in the face of the power of nature. “We’re living through what feels like a really precarious time, and I think we’re all feeling really unsettled,” Curran says, adding that her work blends humor with compassion: “Thinking about how we can give ourselves space and tenderness to embrace our vulnerability, and the things we’d prefer to keep buried.”

It’s an invitation to notice how the experience of her work registers in the body.