COSMIC GEOMETRIES: The Prairie’s Edge

Featuring:

Candida Alvarez,Elijah Burgher, Holly Cahill, Mike Cloud, Gianna Commito, Edie Fake, Vanessa Filley, Julia Fish, Beverly Fishman, Diana Guerrero-Maciá, Azadeh Gholizadeh, Michelle Grabner, Christina Haglid, Rachel Hayes, Gina Hunt, Michiko Itatani, Miyoko Ito, Anna Kunz, Alice Lauffer, Aya Nakamura, Deb Sokolow, May Tveit, Georgina Valverde, Susan C. White, Amy Yoes and Jade Yumang.

Cosmic Geometries: The Prairie’s Edge is a group exhibition of intergenerational and intersectional artists either based in the Midwest and adjacent to it, that examines the spiritual and aesthetic functions of abstract painting and geometry in art. The artists deploy a range of painterly devices to create cosmic and transcendental visions that combine esoteric world traditions with the language of Modernism. Their motifs are inspired by sources as divergent as Islamic architecture, Buddhist mandalas, Hindu yantras, medieval Christian stained-glass windows, and quantum mechanics, rendering formal devices that range from optical illusions to elaborate ornamentation techniques.

These artists primarily work with the language of painting, but also draw from languages and materials adapted from sculpture, installation, craft and textiles. Within these works lies a rich affection for color, shape, and compositional elements, which reveal the daring sensibilities that artists are bringing to the historically overlooked arena of the spiritual in art. These artists’ practices build upon palimpsest legacies of alternative power structures that are constantly being erased.

­­­­In January 2022, Hilma’s Ghost curated the collective’s first curatorial project Cosmic Geometries at EFA Project Space in New York. That show had 25 intergenerational and diverse artists primarily working in New York, but also a few international and historical artists. COSMIC GEOMETRIES: The Prairie’s Edge will focus on 26 artists living, from and/or strongly associated with the Midwest and also include several historically significant artists. The focus of both these exhibitions is primarily on women, nonbinary, and trans artists as that aligns with the mission of the collective.

COSMIC GEOMETRIES: The Prairie’s Edge is curated by Hilma’s Ghost, a feminist artist collective and was co-founded by Brooklyn-based artists Dannielle Tegeder and Sharmistha Ray in 2020. The collective seeks to address existing art historical gaps by cultivating a global network of women, nonbinary, and trans practitioners whose work addresses spirituality. Hilma af Klint’s groundbreaking exhibition at the Guggenheim in 2018 served as a reckoning for art history’s blindspots, especially for women artists considered too ‘mystical’ for the conservative art world. Named after af Klint, Hilma’s Ghost believes that western heteropatriarchal societies maintain a false binary between spirituality and science. This bias serves to overlook womxn artists whose explorations of ancient and pre-modern knowledge systems is a source of personal strength and aesthetic innovation. Hilma’s Ghost acts as a restorative project that uplifts these voices and makes them visible.