Strand Gallery
July 17 – October 3, 2021
ArtWalk Reception - Saturday, July 17, 6 - 9PM
Exhibit Connect: Nastassja Swift in conversation with Ann Johnson
Saturday, October 2, 2021
2PM via Zoom and Facebook Live
This exhibition is supported in part by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and Texas Commission on the Arts.
Work from the exhibition is made possible in part in part by the Black Box Press Foundation. Special thanks to Breanna Mahoney, Jazmine Diggs, Ryland Green, Stephanie Swift, Kyndal Swift, Evan Hannah, and Jessica Burroughs.
Nastassja Swift
Canaan: when I read your letter, I feel your voice
“When I read the physical yellow letter, torn from my brother’s legal pad, I’m often overwhelmed. Initially, it’s a reminder of where he is, and where he’ll be for some time. And then there’s the ability to read, and reread, thus harping on his thoughts and feelings- and it can be emotionally paralyzing. Yet it allows me to hold something that he’s touched - almost as if that’s our form of contact for the time being, reminding me of just how much I miss him. And strangely, that’s the moment that is special.”
Canaan: when I read your letter, I feel your voice is a multi-layered installation and collaborative performance that intimately displays the exchange between Nastassja Swift and her brother, who is currently incarcerated within the Virginia Department of Corrections. Articulating feelings of absence, erasure, and the personal and communal impact of mass incarceration, Nastassja’s culminating body of work explores her personal experience navigating, as his sister, the past few years of Canaan’s incarceration.
At the heart of the exhibition, Security Blanket includes a 40-foot fabric and glass beaded quilt, that serves as both a portal for channeling Canaan’s energy, and a representation of the artist’s feelings of responsibility towards her brother. She questions: “What does my own cell look like?” The oversized blanket looped through the steel fabrication of her brother’s prison cell acknowledges that their communication is both what comforts and consumes her. Measuring 6.5 of his shoes wide, 10 shoes high and 11 shoes long, the quilted room holds space for the artist, and others, to read written letters from loved ones whom they cannot reach due to incarceration. In a purposeful collaboration with her brother, the artist pieces together portraits, collages audio, and curates a space that visualizes the collective weight of confinement.
Nastassja Swift is a visual artist holding a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Art from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is the owner and artist of D for Dolls, an online collection of handmade needle felted figures. Along with being a doll maker, she works with fiber, audio, performance, and film within her studio practice. Her short film, and first collaborative performance, Remembering Her Homecoming, premiered at the Afrikana Independent Film Festival in Fall 2019, and screened at the Virginia Film Festival in Charlottesville and Current Art Fair in Richmond. Swift is the recipient of a Virginia Commission of the Arts Fellowship in Craft for the 2020 cycle, and recently the Black Box Press Foundation, Art as Activism Grant. Her work is permanently displayed at The Colored Girls Museum in Philadelphia and currently on view in a four women exhibition at Pentimenti Gallery in Philadelphia. Swift is an artist in residence for the First Patron Initiative with the Contemporary Arts Network Foundation, where her work is a part of the Foundation’s collection. Her work has been acquired into the Grace Linton Battle Memorial Fund for the Arts Collection, as well as the Quirk Hotel in Charlottesville. Swift’s work has been included in RVA Magazine, RHome Magazine and the Stranger, a Seattle publication. She has participated in several national and international residencies and exhibitions, including her first solo exhibit in Doha, Qatar in 2016, an exhibition at the Urban Institute of Contemporary Art in Michigan, satellite programs with 1708 Gallery, Quirk Gallery's Charlottesville location, and fellowships at the Vermont Studio Center and MASS MoCA. Swift is currently living and working in Virginia.
Press:
Houston Chronicle - Galveston Arts Center exhibit inspired by her brother’s prison letters
Arts & Culture Texas - Lost Time: Nastassja Swift at Galveston Arts Center
Glasstire.com - To Comfort and Consume: Nastassja Swift at Galveston Arts Center
