List Projects 24: Sharona Franklin

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Two white church pews with text on sides and backs frame a sculpture of a wicker casket cast in gelatin. Tan hospital curtains wrap the interior of the gallery and two small sculptures hang on the wall where curtains part.

Exhibition view: List Projects 24: Sharona Franklin, MIT List Visual Arts Center, 2022. Photo: Mel Taing

Location
Bakalar Gallery
Featured Artists
Sharona Franklin
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Sharona Franklin works across a wide array of traditional and non-traditional media including sculpture, textile, social media platforms, and publications.

Invested in bioethics and disability activism, Franklin probes the psychic, social, and biomedical conditions of living with chronic degenerative diseases influenced by both genetic and environmental factors. Many of her works draw on vernacular craft traditions and botany while also referencing pharmacology, creating tensions between the domestic or handmade and the techno-scientific. Sculptures made of gelatin encase medicinal plants and flowers, syringes, food items, autobiographical ephemera, hardware, and prescription pills. A recent series of digitally printed textiles and ceramic plates feature text and patchworked images that document her “bioshrines”— arrangements of materials Franklin uses for the ongoing performance work that is her self-administration of antibody treatments. (She also shares images of her bioshrines in social medial posts under the hashtag #newpsychedeliaofindustrialhealing.) For her first institutional solo exhibition, Franklin will present an ambitious new installation that draws on her rich and characteristically heterodox use of materials to connect her extensive research into bioethics and environmental harm with holistic propositions for remediation and care.

Sharona Franklin (b. 1987) is a Canadian multidisciplinary disabled artist, writer, and advocate. Recent exhibitions and projects include a city-wide public art project with the City of Vancouver, Canada; an online solo exhibition with Printed Matter / St. Marks, New York; The Audain Gallery of Simon Fraser University, Vancouver; La Casa Encendida, Madrid; Kings Leap, New York; Unit 17, Vancouver; G44 Center for Contemporary Photography, Toronto; New Image Art Gallery, Los Angeles; and Flux Factory, New York. Recent publications include Injustice in Biopharm (Cassandra Press, 2019) and Rental Bod (Peace Library Publications, 2016).

List Projects 24: Sharona Franklin is organized by Selby Nimrod, Assistant Curator, MIT List Visual Arts Center.

Sponsors

Exhibitions at the List Center are made possible with the support of Fotene & Tom Coté, Audrey & James Foster, Idee German Schoenheimer, Joyce Linde, Cynthia & John Reed, and Sara-Ann & Robert Sanders. Additional funding for List Projects 24: Sharona Franklin  is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.

General operating support is provided by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; the Council for the Arts at MIT; Philip S. Khoury, Associate Provost at MIT; the MIT School of Architecture + Planning; the Mass Cultural Council; and many generous individual donors. In-kind media sponsorship provided by 90.9 WBUR. The Advisory Committee Members of the List Visual Arts Center are gratefully acknowledged. 

Images

Two white church pews with text on sides and backs frame a sculpture of a wicker casket cast in gelatin. Tan hospital curtains wrap the interior of the gallery and two small sculptures hang on the wall where curtains part.
Beige hospital curtains line a gallery with two white painted church pews around a wicker casket cast in gelatin. Various sculptures hang on the wall in the background.
Two white church pews with text on the sides and backs frame a sculpture of a wicker casket cast in gelatin with tan hospital curtains surrounding the interior of the gallery.
Two white church pews with text on sides and backs frame a sculpture of a wicker casket cast in gelatin with tan hospital curtains surrounding the interior of the gallery
Sculpture of a willow wicker child size casket cast in gelatin sits on the floor in the middle of two white painted wooden church pews with black writing on the sides and back.
Sculpture of a willow wicker child size casket cast in gelatin sits on the floor in front of a white painted wooden church pew with beige hospital curtains lining the gallery walls.
Beige hospital curtains line the gallery wall with gelatin sculptures on a white shelf and an oval shaped textile sculpture hanging on the wall.
Installation view featuring a white church pew with black text, a gelatin sculpture containing a dried fish and an oval shaped textile sculpture hanging on the wall, surrounded by warm tan anti-microbial medical curtains.
A painted white church pew from behind with the quote “good things rise don’t fall for now forever is bending” written on the back in black in a gallery surrounded in beige hospital curtains.
Side view of a white painted church pew with abstract text covering the side and two small sculptures on the wall in the background.
Shaped quilted textile sculpture with images of syringes arranged in decorative compositions with Found objects and squares of printed text. The sculpture is trimmed with a heavy shaggy brown fringe.
Shaped quilted textile sculpture with images of syringes arranged in decorative compositions with Found objects and squares of printed text. The sculpture is trimmed with a heavy shaggy brown fringe.
Three amber like bricks of desiccated gelatin sit on a white shelf. They contain an inhaler, blue flowers, driftwood, stones, red flowers and red gelatin capsules.
An amber like rectangle of dried gelatin encapsulates a whole fish, bordered by metal chains and hardware on a white shelf.
An amber like rectangle of dried gelatin encapsulates a whole fish, bordered by metal chains and hardware on a white shelf with a fabric work to the right on a the wall in the background.
View from above of a wicker casket encased in resinous gelatin with objects including syringes, pills, and beans adorn on the top and dried flowers surround the opening between its lid and base.
a rounded wicker casket encased in resinous gelatin sits on the foor. Objects including syringes, pills, and beans adorn its top and lower sides, and dried flowers surround the opening between its lid and base.
A rounded wicker casket encased in resinous gelatin sits on the floor. Objects including syringes, pills, and beans adorn its top and lower sides, and dried flowers surround the opening between its lid and base.
A rounded wicker casket encased in resinous gelatin sits on the floor. Objects including syringes, pills, and beans adorn its top and lower sides, and dried flowers surround the opening between its lid and base.
Detailed view of a wicker casket encased in resinous gelatin with objects including syringes, pills, and beans on its side, and dried flowers surround the opening between its lid and base.

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List Projects 24: Sharona Franklin

Preview image for the video "List Projects 24: Sharona Franklin".

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