Control is Cassandra gets its title from an essay by Ann Carson, “Cassandra Float Can.” The title figure, Cassandra is a priestess in Greek Mythology, cursed to utter prophecies that are always true but never believed. In this curious position ReStack places “control”. Throughout her work, ReStack explores the way her identities—mother, lover, artist, friend—are filled with the anxiety and wonder of being (and not being) in control of connection and outcome.
She writes: “I see my work as a way to hold things down. As a way to place materials in a particular relation to achieve the control I desire. I am faced with the refusal of the material to act as I wish—the stitch that doesn’t take, the leather that won’t hold, the writing erased. These material lags and refusals correspond to the refusals of my pre-teen daughter; the pull of my lover; the needs of the young child we are fostering; and the strain of living in a world that holds inequities and erasures...”
In Control is Cassandra each of these facets of ReStack’s life inform new photo-based sculptures, as well as a project using polaroids as an attempt to document through opacity. Combining materials from many registers—rubber bands, concrete, plastics, clothing, fur, gold leaf and a wide range of photographic materials—ReStack constructs pieces that viscerally incorporate risk, tension and fragility as metaphors for the many other kinds of precarity in our lives.
Brought together for the first time at The Blue Building Gallery, ReStack’s works in Control is Cassandra invite viewers into a sense of instability but strive toward balance. They embody the tension between the feral and the domestic; motherhood and queer sexulaity; the softness of intimate bodies and the hardness of the world built around them.
Director TBB Emily Falencki, and Ryan Josey
