Mother Load: The challenge of suturing the mitochondrial tear
Zavisha Chromicz
new work
November 25 - December 23, 2022
Paul Petro Contemporary Art is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Zavisha Chromicz.
Chromicz’s new work brings forward ideas established in their last exhibition, The Calming Beauty of the Body’s Molecular Landscape, with an elaborate new fibre-based work in the second floor exhibition space at our gallery. Chromicz says, "Armed with the power of the needle and thread the artist surrenders to the power of the stitch, allowing the repetitive act of sewing to rewire the neural pathways of maternal rapture. By embracing the pulsating, life-affirming energy of the umbilical cord, the artist releases generational trauma and moves towards acceptance". Mother Load: The challenge of suturing the mitochondrial tear mirrors the complexity of finding patience and perseverance, and celebrates the small self-taught steps.
Zavisha Chromicz (b. 1972, Poland) self-identifies as a queer fat trans mixed Roma self-taught artist who has been making community-based mixed media and fibre art for over 20 years. They have consistently made art as a medicine for survival. Their work explores disability in throwaway culture and the joy of queer debauchery, and honours the survivors of childhood and ancestral trauma. Early collaborators includes Will Munro (1975-2010).
They have worked on numerous community and fibre-based projects that explore trauma, healing through pleasure, decadence and queer family making, and colonialism, sexual violence, and disability justice. From 2003-2006 Chromicz was a member and co-facilitator of West Side Stitches, a queer punk makers collective formed by Will Munro and Jeremy Laing. Participants used and taught stitching, embroidery, applique, faggoting and many other fabric art and costuming techniques to make street art, costumes, installations and public art. From 2015-2016 Chromicz collaborated with Leroi Newbold on the Freedom Fighter Puppetry series for Black Lives Matter, Toronto.
In their first exhibition at our gallery , The calming beauty of the body's molecular landscape (March, 2022), developed in the snippets of time available to the parent of young kids during a pandemic lockdown, Chromicz addressed the fear and chaos around COVID-19. While indulging in late-night doom-scrolling to research the biology of the coronavirus, they came upon a breathtaking NASA image of a human cell which inspired the work in the exhibition. In Mother Load: The challenge of suturing the mitochondrial tear, Chromicz builds on ideas from this past exhibition.