REWILDING
New Paintings on Family, Marriage, Motherhood, Grief. Reparenting, and Reconstruction.
Opening 11.22 at Swan Studios.
By recontextualizing these visual elements, Rovenstine transforms familiar scenes into sites of critical inquiry, challenging viewers to consider the ways patriarchal, white supremacist, and colonial structures have permeated every facet of our lives. She also provides a window into a world where these systems crumble as nature re-stakes its claim. In the works that make up this series, rewilding becomes a creative and relational practice – one that gestures toward reciprocal protection, communal care, and the possibility of moving beyond restrictive binaries that uphold patriarchy into interconnected ways of being and showing up in the world, and matriarchal multitudes and abundance.”
-Rachel Kabukala, Curator
“In her most recent series, Rewilding, artist Jaime Rovenstine has applied the concept of an ecological return to that which is natural and restorative to the self and to social systems.
Throughout the series, she employs aesthetic forms associated with domesticity and conventional beauty as devices to trouble the institutions of patriarchy, marriage, white supremacy, religious fundamentalism, and other toxic systems designed to control, categorize, and separate people from the land and one another. Eurocentric gardenscapes are quietly being reclaimed by native plants, while flames threaten altars and familial architectural forms. Topiaries are bedecked with ribbons as yet another form of reclamation, and arachnids appear as preternatural protectors.
rewilding [ree-wahyl-ding]
noun
a form of ecological restoration aimed at increasing biodiversity and restoring natural processes while reducing human influence on ecosystems.
the process of returning land to an earlier, more natural state.
verb
to make or become natural or wild again.
to return an animal to the wild.
