A patron enjoy’s 801 Salon’s “Sweet but Strident” on opening night.

What the patriarchy has fabricated for women often stretches and pulls her in every direction. Be a mom, but have a career, but have hobbies, but be a good lover so you can be a good mother. Yet womanhood also uniquely holds the power to nurture life from within. Expectations of women have evolved over time, but have never quite managed to reach equal footing with male counterparts, even a hundred years after suffrage. Womanhood is no singular experience. It embodies support and love, care and protection, creativity and ingenuity, strength and resilience—while heavily infringed upon by outdated cultural narratives of gendered roles and family structures prescribed to our nonuniform existences. It is through art that womxn have been able to express such distress, agony, love and joy—ultimately herself—in the ever-changing experience of being a woman.

Showing at the Salt Lake City Red Flower Studio in partnership with 801 Salon, Maria Samuelson and Brooklynn Johnson’s Sweet but Strident interrogates the complexities of inhabiting a gendered body and how it is seen, shaped, expected of, creating “a vision of womanhood that is expansive and unsettled – one that embraces contradiction, holds space for fracture, and finds meaning in the ongoing act of reassembly,” they write.

Installation view of “Sweet but Strident,” featuring the work of Brooklynn Johnson (left) and Maria Samuelson.

“Womanhood emerges as something stretched across competing demands, never static, always in flux,” the artist statement goes on. A Leipzig, Germany and Utah-based artist, Samuelson’s fiber works experiment with the lacy intimates often only significant others are privy to. She creates structures evoking bra cups, bodices and panties, while tentacles of straps stretch taut across the walls, creating space within their own spontaneity. There is action in these pieces, motion even in the stasis—directions pulled at the chaotic clasps holding it all together. Samuelson brings a distinct perspective as a mother of a special-needs child, another direction many do not navigate daily, and one that informs her work. Stripes of specialized bra material make up the body of these wonky intimates, embodying a sense of ingenuity and resourcefulness that woman have practiced in fiber traditions for time immemorial. The lace brings sensuality and beauty—a delicacy to our equally gentle and caring and sensual existences.

The pieces take on new lives in every presentation. Currently out of the country, Samuelson gave the installation team freedom to experiment with the pieces, focusing on using the space, playing with form and shape—creating a life in these pieces unique to this show.

Brooklynn Johnson’s oils on linen bring the body back to nature. A shell on the shore laps in the waves, breaking down into shards over time, softening its edges to become anew. And again, and again. Her pieces give a Georgia O’Keeffe sensuality to the curvature of her lines and her deep feeling for the natural world. Her flowers have the curves of bodies, hanging languorously upon one another, creating an intimate space of support. Dot spheres pock her canvases, creating an ethereal mystique, a curiosity about what lies beyond.

Choreographer Halie Bahr will be performing in-studio on Friday, June 12, for the closing reception of the show. Performance starts at 8 p.m., open studio from 7–10 p.m. Bahr presents an experimental dance turned scripted table read — a work years in the making that tethers her body between colliding memoirs, unlocking, slipping and slicing through multiple stories to find ways to pay closer attention together. Sweet yet strident, the performance unearths violence through sincerity. Surrounded by the whispers of these other women’s experiences, it should be a powerful evening of coalescing practices. Please note: this work discusses themes of violence with adult content. Viewer discretion is advised.

Sweet by Strident presented by 801 Salon, Red Flower Studios, Salt Lake City, through June 12.

All images courtesy of 801 Salon.

Genevieve Vahl

Genevieve Vahl is a writer, farmer and artist from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Her writing focuses on how art and community intersect, how to bring access to food and covering climate solutions around the Salt Lake Valley. She also writes poetry, binds artist books, makes paper and runs cyanotype prints from film.