Features a series of thirty-one embroidered samplers by contemporary American artist Elaine Reichek. In these striking works, Reichek replaces the familiar sayings traditionally found in samplers with witty combinations of quotations from mythology, literature, science, art history, and popular culture.
In Forgetting Is How We Survive, people are haunted by ghosts of the past, tormented by doppelgangers and pining for lost futures. Each character faces a turning point - an event that will move their life from one path to another, and every event casts a shadow.
For over four decades, Elaine Reichek has engaged in a critical and feminist reading of historical texts and images, weaving narratives from myth and literature into her artistic practice. Her recent works focus on the “Minoan girls” and the themes of lust, seduction, cruelty, and betrayal associated with figures like Europa, Pasiphaë, Phaedra, and Ariadne. While these women often play supporting roles in narratives dominated by male heroes, Reichek shifts the focus to their complex characters. She compiles diverse interpretations and depictions, using appropriation as a means of emancipation. Since the 1970s, textile techniques such as embroidery and knitting, along with photography and various printing processes, have been central to her work. The thread serves as a unifying element, both literally and metaphorically, allowing Reichek to unravel the labyrinthine stories of her subjects. Each stitch acts as a pixel, connecting visual transmission to the history of thread as a medium. Her artist's book, designed as a decorative archival storage box inspired by the Hamilton Urns, complements her exhibition conceptually and physically. It contains a standard book with exhibition works and an essay, along with four accordion-style leporellos that explore her recent piece, Toutes les filles (2016–17), revealing its 24 motifs and art-historical sources.