The Mattress Factory presents solo exhibitions by artists Jennifer Angus and Shikeith. The two new site-specific installations opened on Wednesday, August 19, 2020 and will be on view at the museum’s Monterey Annex until early 2021.
“The Mattress Factory is honored and excited to show new site-specific installations by Shikeith and Jennifer Angus. The work of both artists is enthralling, thought-provoking, and dynamic, and I look forward to visitors’ engagement with the exhibitions,” says Hayley Haldeman, Interim Executive Director.
Angus’ The Museum of All Things is a cabinet of curiosities focusing on insects’ vital role in our world. The walls feature patterns and designs made from cicadas, weevils and small beetles, and the vibrant magenta red coloring on the walls is created from a little-known insect that plays an important role in the food and cosmetics industries; cochineal is a type of scale insect (as is lice), found in Latin America from which a common food colorant is derived. At once a call to action and a celebration, the center of the gallery features a dinner party, where native Pennsylvanian animals enjoy a meal of bread and honey.
In Feeling The Spirit In The Dark, Shikeith advances his constructions of "blue spaces" that act to reconcile what haunts Black men's interior worlds in the afterlife of the Transatlantic slave trade. Within this installation, he mines the surreal to complicate the relationship between the erotic, slavery, and Black spirituality.
