Control is Cassandra

Sheilah ReStack & collaborative works with Dani ReStack

May 7th — July 2nd, 2022
Opening reception: May 7th, 6pm — 8pm

Artist Talk: July 2nd, 12pm — 1pm on Zoom.
A recording of this talk is available here: https://vimeo.com/726505696

Control is Cassandra was an exhibition of new work by Nova Scotia born artist Sheilah ReStack. The exhibition also featured collaborative works with Sheilah’s partner, Dani ReStack.

Control is Cassandra centred on ReStack's most recent explorations in photography and sculpture. Drawing from her many identities—mother, lover, artist, friend—ReStack’s latest works investigated the precarity of everyday life and the complexities of queer relation. Combining a wide range of photographic techniques with a wide range of sculptural materials, these pieces viscerally incorporate balance, tension and fragility.

At the opening reception, Port Greville based poet Colleen Collins performed poems and songs that arose from her exchanges with Sheilah on the topic of Cassandra.

Control is Cassandra gets its title from an essay by Anne Carson, “Cassandra Float Can.” The title figure, Cassandra is a priestess in Greek Mythology, cursed to utter prophecies that are always true but never believed.

In this curious position ReStack places “control”. Throughout her work, ReStack explores the way her identities—mother, lover, artist, friend—are filled with the anxiety and wonder of being (and not being) in control of connection and outcome.

She writes: “I see my work as a way to hold things down. As a way to place materials in a particular relation to achieve the control I desire. I am faced with the refusal of the material to act as I wish—the stitch that doesn’t take, the leather that won’t hold, the writing erased. These material lags and refusals correspond to the refusals of my pre-teen daughter; the pull of my lover; the needs of the young child we are fostering; and the strain of living in a world that holds inequities and erasures...”

In Control is Cassandra each of these facets of ReStack’s life inform new photo-based sculptures. Combining materials from many registers—rubber bands, concrete, plastics, clothing, fur, gold leaf and a wide range of photographic materials—ReStack constructs pieces that viscerally incorporate risk, tension and fragility as metaphors for the many other kinds of precarity in our lives.

Brought together for the first time, ReStack’s works in Control is Cassandra invite viewers into a sense of instability but strive toward balance. They embody the tension between the feral and the domestic; motherhood and queer sexulaity; the softness of intimate bodies and the hardness of the world built around them.

Sheilah (Wilson) ReStack was born in Caribou River, Nova Scotia. ReStack’s work is a feminist, queer proposal for new systems of knowledge and narrative. She has her BFA from NSCAD University, Halifax and MFA from Goldsmiths College, London. Solo shows include Build Your Altar, at Enjoy Gallery in Wellington, New Zealand (2014); If Becoming This, at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio (2015); and Hold Hold Spill at Interface Gallery in Oakland, California (2020). Recent solo shows with Dani ReStack include Stack for Carrington’s Hyena at Iceberg Projects, Chicago (2017); and Stack at the Columbus Museum of Art (2017). Residencies include Banff Center for the Arts (2012); Struts and Faucet Media Centre (2014); Headlands Center for the Arts (2016); and a MacDowell fellowship (2019). ReStack is the recipient of the Howard Foundation Fellowship for Photography (2017) and Canada Council Project Grants (2013 & 2017). Sheilah ReStack is Associate Professor and Chair Studio Art at Denison University.

Dani (Leventhal) ReStack was born in Columbus, Ohio. Dani’s work is made with an emotional logic questioning cultural, personal and animal realities. She received an MFA in Sculpture at University of Illinois Chicago in 2003 and an MFA in Film/Video at Bard College in 2010. Her work has screened at Radclyffe Hall, Glasgow, UK; Gaa Gallery, Wellfleet, MA; Chapter, Cardiff, UK; the 2017 Whitney Biennial; the Rotterdam International Film Festival; The Ann Arbor Film Festival; UnionDocs, New York, NY; and MoMA PS1. She has received awards from The Kazuko Trust (2013); The Eileen Maitland Award (2015); the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice Visual Arts; and the Wexner Center for the Arts (2020). Dani ReStack is an Associate Professor of Art at Ohio State University.