Project: ARTspace is pleased to present FOLDS, a unique project conceived by artists Laura Larson and Suzanne Silver. Originating as a mail exchange of small works between the two artists, a larger exhibition called Return to Sender was installed by the two artists in November 2020 at the Columbus Printed Arts Center. The works embodied "our experience of loss, sorrow, vulnerability and rage: a living record of our response to the pandemic and the epidemic of anti-black racism and violence."

For Folds, Larson and Silver invited 30 artists and writers to participate, expanding their couple into a "constellation." The artists stipulated: "All works must be sent through the mail, either in a standard size envelope or a form no larger than 9 x 12”. With inspiration from Emily Dickinson’s envelope poems and Harry Smith’s paper airplanes, each artist will be prompted to activate the fold as form and concept and consider the mailed object’s potential to expand and collapse, travel and collect. By embracing the conditions of scale and risk inherent in shipping, the works will explore the aesthetics and ethics of contingency and serendipity and repair." The project launched from Siena, Italy with Silver’s Illuminated Newspaper in June 2023 and concluded in Columbus, OH with Larson’s Assembly in August 2024, traveling throughout the U.S. A fold is a material memory, a crease that can’t be undone. Folds convenes around the hopeful act of care and connection, holding the history of being held.

Participating Artists: Erica Baum, Sophia Chai, Moyra Davey, Amber Elison, Christine Heindl, Sara Hess, Christine Hume, Rhea Karam, Justine Kurland, Dionne Lee, Laura Larson, Laura Lisbon, Mary Lum, Aspen Mays, Klea McKenna, Christian Patterson, Camille Paulhan, Jenny Perlin, Dani & Sheilah ReStack, Julia Schwartz, Lizzie Scott, Suzanne Silver, Lydia Smith, Christopher Stackhouse, Luke Stettner, Jo-ey Tang, Catherine Taylor, Carmen Winant and Vanessa Woods.

A catalog is available.

Laura Larson is a photographer and writer based in Columbus, OH. Mining the intersection between documentary and lyrical concerns, her work looks to photography’s histories to tell personal and sociocultural stories about women’s experiences. She’s exhibited her work extensively, at such venues as Bronx Museum of the Arts, Centre Pompidou, Columbus Museum of Art, The Getty, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Wexner Center for the Arts. Her work is held in the collections of Allen Memorial Art Museum, Deutsche Bank, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and Whitney Museum of American Art. She is the recipient of grants from Greater Columbus Arts Council, Ohio Arts Council, New York Foundation of the Arts, and a 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography. Hidden Mother (2017), her first book, was shortlisted for the Aperture-Paris Photo First Photo Book Prize. Larson organized a companion exhibition, the first to be devoted to the vernacular subject of hidden mother photography to be presented in the U.S., which traveled from 2014-16. Her second book, City of Incurable Women (2022), imagines the complex lives of 19th century women, diagnosed as suffering from hysteria, as rebellious spirits haunting the present. Her third book, All the Women I Know, a collaboration with writer Christine Hume, is forthcoming in 2025.

Suzanne Silver is an artist and educator living in Columbus, OH. Silver’s work explores the materiality of language and its ambiguities through sentence diagrams, sky imagery, incantations, and punctuation in drawings, paintings, and photograms as well as installations in real space. Silver has exhibited her work internationally, including the Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), / Slash (San Francisco), the Mattress Factory (Pittsburgh), Axel Raben Gallery (NYC), Nexus Contemporary Art Center (Atlanta), Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco), the Castle of Otranto (Otranto, Italy), Ortega y Gasset Projects (Brooklyn), Weston Art Gallery (Cincinnati), Wexner Center for the Arts (Columbus), The Bureau for Open Culture, and the Columbus Museum of Art. Her work will be presented at Galerie Marcelle Alix (Paris) autumn 2024. Silver has received Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards and grants from the Greater Columbus Arts Council. Her artist’s book Blacklists/Whitelists was published by Logan Elm Press. Silver’s art and writing have appeared in such publications as the American Abstract Artists Journal and Images: A Journal of Jewish Art and Visual Culture. Silver’s work can be found in the Avant-Writing Collection at The Ohio State University, which focuses on visual poetry, conceptual art, mail art, and artists’ books.

Founded in 2011, Project: ARTspace is an interdisciplinary creative project space. Our organization programs events and exhibition where curators and artists of all levels have the chance to meet, engage and promote new collaborative projects.

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LINK TO PARTICIPATING ARTIST BIOS
Image List Link

Luke Sterner
in response to instructions for
Folds 2023
Mixed media on paper
8 3/4 x 11 3/4 in (closed)
18 1/4 x 26 in (open)

Christine Heindl
Untitled (2023)
Collage, marker, and ink on paper
14 7/8 x 14 7/8”