SITES OF EXHAUST

MALFLOR
Nancy Julia Hicks

August 3rd - September 2nd, 2023
Opening reception Thursday August 3rd 5-8pm

In Sites of Exhaust, artists MALFLOR and Nancy Julia Hicks unite their individualpractices encompassing sculpture, installation, and printmaking to investigate the parallels between the environment, human-made structures, and gender non-conforming bodies.

MALFLOR is a non-binary transgender, transdisciplinary artist from Houston, TX, based in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Their practice is informed by their interests in psychology, the natural world, material culture, duality, and the politicization of queer trans existence. Through sculptures, videos, photographs, and installations, MALFLOR searches for interconnectedness through patterns found in the human body, the earth-body, and human-made systems. THAT WHICH FLOWS BETWEEN is an installation of photographic screenprints made with the artist’s serous fluid, drained and collected following gender-affirming top surgery. Bringing an interiority to the exterior, these bodily fluids form images of landscapes, water, and an embrace between lovers. Through video works such as KROPP / VANN (BODY / WATER), KROPP / BRANN (BODY / FIRE), and IN TRANSITION MY BODY IS ANEARTH, the artist explores bodily presence, absence, and the inevitability of change through time, natural elements, and desire. Solo exhibitions include A Complex Desire at Sure Space (2020), But The Skin of the Earth is Seamless at Hair + Nails (2021), In Tending To at the pH Gallery (2021), and HULDRA at The Medium Arts (2022). MALFLOR has also exhibited work at Franconia Sculpture Park, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Rochester Art Center, and Clamp Light Gallery, among others.

Nancy Julia Hicks is a non-binary printmaker, sculptor, and educator from Houston, TX based in Minneapolis, MN. Through visualizing the body as an object and a machine, they negotiate the infliction of pain on the environment, space, and othered bodies.

Hicks uses storytelling sourced from their own poetry to discuss how human exploitation of environment and land mirrors the exploitation of individuals; they use materials that visualize tension, skin, and the body. In works like Doctrine #3 and In your hands they layer image, text, and material on top of latex stretched to its breaking point to explore creating objects that bridge relationships between the body and environment. They’ve exhibited work at Hair + Nails, Dreamsong, Nightclub at Night, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in the Concourse Gallery, the Soap Factory, the Highpoint Center for Printmaking, the Soo Visual Arts Center, and other locations.