One woman draws on another's back and both are surrounded by floral embroideries

“songs leak from my bedroom walls” (2023). Photo by Charles Benton. All images © Zoë Buckman, courtesy of Lyes & King, shared with permission

What responsibility does an artist have to care for her viewers? Zoë Buckman thinks deeply about this question and discusses it in a recent conversation with Colossal.

One thing that’s important to me has to do with beauty and softness. Those are definitely tools that I embrace and harness. I know that I’m exploring something that is very difficult and triggering. It’s always been important to me that I make work that draws people in and creates an environment for conversations about violence, rape, abortion, miscarriage, and all of these things. In the work itself, I am trying to care for viewers.

Much of Buckman’s output during the past few years has championed the fight: that of resilient survivors, of rebelling against the patriarchy, and of her own sparring with the art world as she sought to use mediums historically associated with “women’s work” to put critical issues front and center. Her new series, though, titled Tended and on view at Lyes & King, takes a softer approach, which Buckman discusses in this conversation about her early indoctrination in feminism and what it’s like to raise a child around such difficult, and undoubtedly necessary, work.

Read the interview.

 

two images of embroidered portraits, on the left, a woman looks directly at the viewer with a black eye while a younger girl sees blood in her underwear. on the right, a child sits in between her mom's legs as she does her hair

Left: “holy ash” (2023). Right: “thoughts run out my hands like a gecko” (2023). Photos by Charles Benton

a close up of a woman's face with loose threads and floral applique

Detail of “songs leak from my bedroom walls” (2023)

a close up of a child's face with loose threads and embroidered details

Detail of “thoughts run out my hands like a gecko” (2023)

Do stories and artists like this matter to you? Become a Colossal Member today and support independent arts publishing for as little as $5 per month. The article A Colossal Interview: Zoë Buckman On Tenderness, Her Evolution as a Woman and Mother, and Embroidering Her Largest Works To Date appeared first on Colossal.

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