Jennifer May Reiland Carnage Cecily E. Horton Gallery Lawndale Art & Performance Center Feb 6 – May 1, 2021
Jennifer Reiland Carnage Cecily E. Horton Gallery
In Carnage, Jennifer May Reiland creates a personal pantheon of secular and religious saints and martyrs, ranging from Princess Diana to bullfighter Juan Belmonte to Maria of Agreda, a Spanish nun whose body was said to be seen floating over Texas in the early days of the Spanish conquest. In works on paper and wood, Reiland draws from medieval European imagery and the tradition of Mexican devotional painting to examine female guilt, martyrdom, and violence against women. These works weave together the stories of many women, historical and imagined. From medieval saints like Saint Catherine and Saint Agatha to historical martyrs like Marie Antoinette and Juana la Loca to modern celebrity martyrs like Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana, these women’s bodies are sexualized, idolized, then ritually picked apart by the mob. Reiland combines the known facts of their lives with dreams, associations, and fantasies about them, attempting to fill in the holes where the truth is unknowable.
Jennifer Reiland is a New York-based visual artist who creates watercolor and pen drawings with accompanying animations. Reiland is a graduate of High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston and Cooper Union in New York (BFA, 2011). Reiland also studied art in both Spain and France, where she was a resident at the Fondation des États-Unis through the Harriet Hale Woolley Scholarship. Since, Reiland has been a part of multiple New York residencies including the SharpeWalentas Studio Program (2014-2015), the Open Sessions program at The Drawing Center (2016-2017), and the studio program at Queens Museum (2018-2020).
After earning his Ph.D. in Art History from Harvard University in 2015, Joshua O’Driscoll joined the Morgan Library as Assistant Curator of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts. At the Morgan, he was the in-house curator of the 2018 exhibition, Medieval Monsters: Terrors, Aliens, Wonders; and he is currently co-curating an exhibition on the arts of the book in the Holy Roman Empire, entitled Imperial Splendor, which will open in the fall of 2021. Prior to joining the Morgan, Joshua assisted on major manuscript exhibitions including Royal Manuscripts, held at the British Library in London, and Beyond Words, an exhibition of manuscripts in Boston area collections.
Crosses to Bear: An essay by Joshua O’Driscoll Looking back to traditional forms and subject matter offers some artists a powerful way of weaving personal experiences into the broader fabric of human history. For others, engaging with past traditions becomes more of a confrontation, a way of grappling with the particular customs and beliefs imposed on each of us at birth. With Jennifer May Reiland, an artist born into a world of hunting, gun-owning, and evangelical Protestantism in Houston, Texas, the gruesome beauty of medieval Christian art—and its Latin-American iterations—provides fertile ground for creating works that respond to her own inherited traditions, without explicitly celebrating or denouncing them. This strategically ambivalent stance links her work to artists like Hieronymus Bosch or Pieter Brueghel the Elder—who, like Reiland, were adept at critically and cryptically observing their contemporary world through the lens of salvation history (a broad and religiously-infused conception of time in which the biblical past both illuminates the present and also points ahead to the coming apocalypse) while at the same time keeping their own personal convictions inscrutable to their viewers. The rich visual traditions mined by Reiland are based in large part on the foundational image of Christ’s Crucifixion—an event that fatefully and fundamentally linked brutal acts of torture and violence with the promise of salvation and redemption. Humiliated and executed as a criminal, Christ’s death provided a model of holy suffering that generations of saints and martyrs would imitate in endlessly colorful ways. Medieval artists, in turn, became experts of violence. Their goal was not to be gratuitously morbid, but rather to create imagery capable of a physical, bodily impact (vision was believed to be a tactile process in the Middle Ages). Many of the formal aspects they developed resonate with Reiland’s work: the disregard of strict perspective; the combination of disparate narratives and time periods; or the jarring juxtapositions of violence, beauty (even eroticism), and sanctity. This telescoping between the biblical past and the present, the iconic and the mundane, is particularly evident in Martyrs Part II (2019), a sprawling work whose format recalls monumental altarpieces of the later Middle Ages. As in the celebrated triptychs by Hieronymus Bosch, the three scenes correspond to different eras of Reiland’s own version
of salvation history. The left panel evokes her parents’ generation, juxtaposing the retrofiltered decadence and gore of bullfighting with the harrowing depiction of a supine woman, veiled while actively in labor. A self-portrait of the artist situates the central panel in the present era, characterized by visions of the Crucifixion and 9/11, two touchstones of childhood trauma, emerging from her teenage backpack. The panel at right evokes a timeless hereafter in which an anonymous woman, surrounded by chaotic picture-worlds of legendary saints, casts off her bag as she prepares to sacrifice herself to be devoured by a waiting crocodile—a horrific act of self-imposed martyrdom. The triptych’s structure reveals the rhyming cycles of familial history, in which sacrifice and the necessary endurance of bodily suffering thread through past, present, and future. Anchored in time by a LIFE magazine cover, at lower center, featuring the 1956 marriage of Grace Kelly and Prince Ranier, Martyrs Part I (2020) serves as a prequel and pendant to the larger triptych. The composition centers on a woman who has just given birth. Shown lifeless with her eyes closed, the only connection between the mother and her wailing infant is the sinuous umbilical cord about to be severed by an anonymous figure clad in black. This routine and necessary procedure is recast as an ominous act of violence, underscoring the paradoxical link between suffering and the promise of life. Drawing on a well-established meta-pictorial tradition, favored by Old Masters from Van Eyck to Vermeer, Reiland lines the back wall with familiar iconographies of the Virgin like the Nativity or the Immaculate Conception, as well as many graphic depictions of martyrs meeting their fate. Among them is St. Agatha, at far left, a virgin who was sadistically tortured by having her breasts cut off; and St. Hippolytus, to the left of the infant, whose demise involved having his limbs pulled apart by wild stallions. Nearby, St. Margaret emerges from the bloody corpse of a dragon—a scene that was deeply linked by medieval viewers to the trials of childbirth. Such images were featured in countless birth girdles from the Middle Ages—parchment scrolls with prayers to Margaret that were draped over the bellies of women during labor to help ensure safe delivery. By seamlessly combining such iconic medieval representations with instantly recognizable elements of daily life and popular culture, Reiland confronts past and present alike, while keeping the burden of tradition from ever being too much to bear.
Jennifer Reiland Carnage Exhibition Checklist
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Self Portrait Watching Bullfight Videos on Sunday Night, 2015 Watercolor and pen on paper 7 x 10”
02. Martyrs Part I (30), 2020 Watercolor and pen on paper 4’ x 59” 03. Martyrs Part II (29), 2019 Watercolor and pen on paper 59” x 26’ 04. The Duke of Alba Pietà or Now in My Broken Dotage I Do as I Did in My Infancy, 2020 Watercolor and pen on paper 65 1/2 x 59”
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05. Chester, 2014 Watercolor and pen on paper 12 x 9” 06. Pasiphaë, 2016 Watercolor and pen on paper 12 x 9” 07.
The Disease is Spreading, 2014 Watercolor and pen on paper 14 x 10”
08. Taurine, 2016 Watercolor and pen on paper 7 x 10”
09. Bullfight TV #1, 2015 Watercolor and pen on paper 7 x 10” 10. Marie Duplessis Deathbed (Vanitas #1), 2020 Colored pencil on paper 9 x 12” 11. Marilyn Deathbed 2 (Vanitas #3), 2020 Colored pencil on paper 9 x 12” 12.
Dead Marilyn 2 (Never before seen photos from Marilyn death scene), 2019 Colored pencil on paper 9 x 12”
13. Dead Marilyn 1 (Morgue), 2019 Colored pencil on paper 9 x 12” 14. Dead Marilyn 3 (Bedroom), 2019 Colored pencil on paper 9 x 12” 15. Smallpox (Vanitas #2), 2020 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9” 16. The Death of Juan Belmonte (Vanitas #4), 2020 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9” 17. Sunday Afternoon Feeding Ruby, 2019 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9” 18. Diana Veronica (Vanitas #6), 2020 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9” 19. Grandmother, 2014 Colored pencil and oil pastel on paper 12 x 9”
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20. Self Portrait with Pietà, 2014 Colored pencil and oil pastel on paper 12 x 9” 21. Princess Diana Tarot Cards, 2020 Watercolor and pen on paper 12 x 9” 22. Alba Killing the Innocent Inhabitants of the Netherlands, 2020 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9” 23. While Alba Makes Love to the Whore of Babylon, the Country’s Economy Decays (Vanitas #7), 2020 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9” 24. Diana and Dolours, 2020 Watercolor and pen on paper 12 x 9” 25. The Birth, 2020 Watercolor and pen on paper 12 x 9” 26. The Serf Ballerina I, 2020 Watercolor and pen on paper 12 x 9” 27. The Serf Ballerina II, 2020 Watercolor and pen on paper 12 x 9” 28. Poison Novena, 2021 Watercolor and pen on paper 12 x 9” 29.
Empress Carlota Remembers her Domains in Mexico, 2020 Watercolor and pen on paper 12 x 9”
30. Juana La Loca Cat Hallucination, 2020 Oil on wood 12 x 9” 31. The Poisoned Shirt, 2020 Watercolor and pen on paper 12 x 9” 32. Juan Belmonte Fights by Moonlight, 2020 Watercolor and pen on paper 12 x 9” 33.
Maria of Agreda II (Body and Wounds), 2021 Watercolor and pen on paper 10 x 7”
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34. Maria of Agreda VI (Desk and Window), 2021 Watercolor and pen on paper 10 x 7” 35. Maria of Agreda I (Spain and the New World), 2021 Watercolor and pen on paper 12 x 9” 36. Maria of Agreda III (Over the Atlantic), 2021 Watercolor and pen on paper 12 x 9” 37. Maria of Agreda V (Face and Wounds), 2021 Watercolor and pen on paper 9 x 12” 38. I Don’t Know I Just Feel Guilty, 2016 Watercolor and pen on paper 12 x 9” 39. I Was Afraid to Look, 2016 Watercolor and pen on paper 10 x 7” 40. La Dame Aux Camellias I, 2020 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9” 41. La Dame Aux Camellias 2, 2020 Colored pencil on paper 12 x 9” 42. Urn, 2019 Ink on cut paper 12 x 9” 43. My Life is Torture, 2019 Ink on cut paper 11 x 81/2” 44. Heads, 2019 Ink on cut paper 12 x 9” 45. Crocodiles, 2019 Ink on cut paper 12 x 9” 46. Syphilis Pietà, 2019 Ink on cut paper 12 x 9” 47. Arsenic, 2019 Ink on cut paper 10 x 7”
Mission Lawndale is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center that engages Houston communities with exhibitions and programs that explore the aesthetic, critical, and social issues of our time. About Lawndale believes in the role of art and artists to inspire and inform the world around us. By serving as an intimate gathering place to experience art and ideas, Lawndale seeks to foster connections between communities in Houston and beyond. Lawndale presents a diverse range of artistic practices and perspectives through exhibitions and programs, including lectures, symposia, film screenings, readings, and musical performances. Through exhibition opportunities, the Artist Studio Program, institutional collaborations, and the engagement of an advisory board comprised of artists, curators, and scholars, Lawndale seeks within its mission to support all artistic and cultural communities of Houston. Supporters Lawndale’s exhibitions and programs are produced with generous support from The Anchorage Foundation of Texas; The Brown Foundation, Inc.; The Brown Foundation, Inc.; David R. Graham; The Joan Hohlt and Roger Wich Foundation; The John M. O’Quinn Foundation; The John R. Eckel, Jr. Foundation; Houston Endowment; Kathrine G. McGovern/The John P. McGovern Foundation; The National Endowment for the Arts; The Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation; the Texas Commission on the Arts; The City of Houston; and The Wortham Foundation, Inc. Additional support provided by Benjamin Berg/Berg Hospitality, Illuminations Lighting Design, Lindsey Schechter/Houston Dairymaids, Saint Arnold Brewing Company, and Topo Chico. Additional support provided by Benjamin Berg/Berg Hospitality, Illuminations Lighting Design, Lindsey Schechter/ Houston Dairymaids, Saint Arnold Brewing Company, and Topo Chico.
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