Maria Fee

Contours of nature galvanize the construction of a whimsical world. Hanging nests, draped forests, dappled pavilions are reactions to modes of alienation arising from modernity’s migrations, homogenizations, mechanizations, and relinquishing obligations to God, kin, and neighbor. If place is the ground for all social interactions, Emplacement reformulates indeterminate white walls to reimagine and propose sacred sanctuaries, playful and alluring dwelling places that enable transcendence of self/selves to receive the world simultaneously as more and as is.

Emplacement signals the way human energies share transactions with locality concurrent with the way place determines and absorbs human gestures. The activity, in this case, is a poetic enterprise, a humbling exercise that forfeits utopia as a solid solution to embrace awkward heterotopias, a world within a world reflecting places of uncommon multiplicities yielding the unexpected.

So That I May Dwell Among Them explores the role of place in connection with spiritual formation. Just as YHWH discipleship commenced with the collective construction of a tent, the canvas panels that comprise the exhibition demarcate a locale for connecting with God and others. The installation also references different degrees of nomadic states. From children’s blanket forts to the pup tents of the unhoused to the global refugee crisis, hospitality is a fragile practice seeking sanctuary. Through spiritual disciplines of care and connection, hospitality shifts the utility of locality—a place to sleep and store into something much more—real places that nurture spirit, mind, body.