The aitken pillow

2021

The Aitken Pillow

72 x 60 inches
Fabric, thread, Poly-fil, vinyl, yarn, rope, inflatable mattress
2021

The Aitken Pillow is a comment on and reaction to a recent exhibition by the artist Doug Aitken. The show at Regen Projects in Los Angeles titled, Flags & Debris utilizing handmade quilts and performing artists in a video piece. After seeing the show and listening to the artist talk between the artist and Max Hollein, the Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art I was struck by the kindness of the artist but also the lack of preparedness of the gallery in putting together an artist talk over Zoom. While I enjoyed the work in person, I felt the conversation was lacking in interest and excitement. Mr. Hollein had not seen the work he was there to discuss and before the Zoom talk began one of the owners of the gallery accidentally started her camera and we, the audience sat witness to her candidly sitting at her desk unaware we were watching. After several minutes where she fiddled with her phone, typed things on her computer and spoke to someone off camera about private topics and the innerworkings of the gallery, she became aware of our presence, looked very embarrassed and quickly turned off her camera.

In addition to the strange proceedings, Mr. Aitken seemed to allude to the quilts featured in the show as something he himself has made by hand or otherwise had a physical hand in creating. To me, this sounded like a fallacy or a misunderstanding of the question that was posed to him. The entire affair that day seemed like a failure on several levels and I while I was annoyed about how the questions were asked and answered, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for Mr. Aitken who was clearly bound by contract to be a part of the mess transpiring on screen.

I was inspired to create the Aitken Pillow as a response to my feelings about the exhibition and the resulting artist talk. Rather than making the statement about my feelings inherently negative, which was my overall reaction to the original work, I felt as though there was already enough negativity in the world and in the spirit of artists supporting artists decided to create a positive statement instead. I had been gifted a vintage quilt that needed a lot of repair work and I decided to use the quilt as a basis for a response to both the show and the Zoom call.

With this work I strive to comment on the utilization of textiles in other artistic mediums as a way to ground the overall slick and polished product in a nostalgic, folksy, complacency for the audience. As an installation the Aitken Pillow invites viewers to engage physically with the work by hugging it, stroking the soft fabric and playing with the pom poms and tassels, but to also decipher the message that scrolls across the pillow itself to uncover deeper meaning.