Jennifer Markowitz

Jennifer Markowitz is a textile artist presenting her work for the first time at Gail Severn Gallery. Certain works included in the show were previously featured in ‘Reckoning and Resilience: North Carolina Art Now’ at the Nasher Museum at Duke University. Markowitz uses panels of silk and personal garments as her canvas to create images and text pulled from memories, traumas, confusions, artifacts, and maps. Markowitz deconstructs, embroiders and stiffens the fabrics, with each garment revealing its own history. The artist explains, “I am now transfixed by encounters with absence and presence. Specifically, I’m gripped by the mysterious traces our bodies leave behind within garments and bed linens and how embroidery can reveal those private territories. Embroidery can expose memory in all its disarray. Each piece is stitched completely by hand. Sometimes the thread speaks. Sometimes, I make it scream.”