The old custom of a young girl and
her mother filling a hope chest with hand-embroidered linens and clothing and
domestic niceties to prepare for her marriage seems to have gone out of
vogue. It isn’t even taken for granted
now that a woman will marry, let alone spend her adult life pressing linens and
thinking of her own daughter’s dowry. When the tradition was still alive, what
kind of return did women feel they received on their investment? What compelled them to encourage their
daughters down the same path? For her latest exhibition “Trousseau,” Rebekah
Johnson interviewed three generations of women in her life about marriage. She asks: “What else was folded up in the
cedar chest with the linen? What replaces
these items as time goes on?”
From
these handwritten interviews, Johnson selected quintessential phrases and cut
them into vellum. Superimposing layer
upon layer, the thoughts overlap and are partially obfuscated. The penmanship
is the only hint regarding to whom the thoughts belong. I found this device to
be full of potential. The light travels though the cut-out words like a sound
wave, with the brighter spots looking like clamoring voices. The light boxes are an elegant representation
of an inter-generational gathering in which matriarchs trade reflections on
childbirth and the turn of mutual friends’ lives, while the younger women
participate precociously, soaking up wisdom and listening for inevitable
references to sex.
This
potential, however, was not fully realized. The writing is blown up so large
that the space within each chest only allowed for one or two sets of
superimpositions. I found myself expecting and wanting a greater amount of
visual complexity. For example, Rachel
Hellner’s piece “Married in Red” addresses a related convention and cliché
though handwriting as well. Her text builds up and overlaps on the page like a
cognitive feedback loop, and the viewer feels the over-determining power of
matriarchal pressure. Johnson decorated
the texts with stenciled borders of folksy origin, but they seemed more to take
up space than truly contribute to the meaning of the pieces. They are also so simple and easily
identifiable that rather than opening the piece further by connecting it to the
generative and compellingly intricate decorative arts, (a major part of the
“feminine through-line” Johnson is exploring) they close each piece with the
quick finality of stereotype.
The
chests themselves were a motley collection from Island thrift stores, ranging
narrowly in style from plain milled-cedar from the 1950s to cedar with horrid
veneers and doweling from the ‘70s, in the fashion of ‘built-in’ TV sets. Johnson put a considerable amount of research
into the provenance of the chests, and the backgrounds of their makers. It is interesting to contemplate their mass
production, especially when they provide a connection to an era of hand-made
clothing and dowries. I disagree, however, with the method of presenting the
research. Printed onto 8 1/2x11”
cartridge paper and taped to the inside lid of each chest, the material
detracted visually from the elegance of the light boxes, and besides, was too
difficult to read, being so long and so low.
This
issue relates to the other main component of the show: a short story by Anton
Chekov transcribed by hand and hung on cedar shakes around the gallery. The story is one of a mother and daughter
obsessively preparing a trousseau, and contributes greatly to Johnson’s
exploration of the tradition, but one must read the story in its entirety and
in sequence to benefit at all from it. Furthermore, the writing is on vellum,
which is glued to the cedar shakes. The
vellum does not relate to the cedar except that it is also used in the light
boxes, and the writing is done in brown felt pen. I understand a lot of
craftsmanship went into the production of the cedar shingles, so it is a shame
they are covered up and serve so passively, at best decoratively.
Reading
the Chekov, it became clear that the use
of cedar and mothballs to slow time’s inevitable decay was an important motif to Johnson’s
work. I would have liked to encounter these smells in the exhibit. I also found myself wondering about how one
protects against changes in style over the years—a chest stuffed with 20-year
old clothing might be even less useful to a new bride than a chest of
moth-eaten scraps. Perhaps this is where Johnson’s inclusion of the ugly 70s
era hope chests fits in: not even the best intentions can prevent fashion from
changing.
Johnson’s
stated intent was to explore individual and societal changes in emotion around
and attitudes towards marriage, to track “the history of hope.” Her exhibition engenders a meditation on the
emphasis put on marriage, the sheer investment in the idea, and the
pleasantries and follies of older generations guiding the hopes of the
younger. The difficulty is in the
presentation of some of the more complicating ideas such as the Chekov, which
introduces humor and pathos, and the research on the chests, which give a sense
of the larger economic picture of making and keeping a trousseau. A more atmospheric and less didactic approach
might create more space for contemplation.
The evocative power of scent would be well-paired with her use of light.
Stepping
back to judge the overall success of the show, I am left wondering. Was the
overall aesthetic intent of the show for it to be an installation or a
collection of works? If an installation, the atmospheric potentials of light
and scents were missed; if a collection, the pieces needed further distillation
or development. The subject is indeed
complex and well worth investigating, and Johnson has succeeding in starting
the conversation, but the show reads like a presentation of reflections that
might be woven together and teased apart; it appears as a beginning of an idea
rather than a resolution of one.
