Be Careful with Mother: Notes from Beyond the Binary

Exhibition on view: August 4 – September 9, 2017
Closing reception: Friday, September 8, 6-9pm

Filter Photo is pleased to announce Be Careful with Mother: Notes from Beyond the Binary, a solo exhibition of work by Janice Bond, organized by La Keisha Leek, at Filter Space gallery.

Launched in 2016, Beyond the Binary is an ongoing multimedia series and social practice created by Janice Bond. The work examines the kinship between the self-identified woman’s body and nature. A complex structure in nature is often met with wonder, reverence, and desire. A woman labeled as complex is often perceived as confusing, a liability, or worse, a threat. From anatomy to love, pleasure to personal safety, history repeatedly exposes the lens of age, race, class, respectability, politics, and gender’s influence on societal norms. Bond believes it is imperative for women, particularly women of color to take the lead in documenting each other across mediums and platforms. By both providing sanctuary and reflection, this “work in progress” is an intergenerational and intercultural sisterhood, a new form of cultural mapping built on the trust, liberation, and love of women around the world.

La Keisha Leek organized this exhibition for Filter Space gallery where Bond presents a meditation on woman as giving tree, caretaker, and human. Through photo-based installations, Be Careful with Mother: Notes from Beyond the Binary, delves deeper into memory, familial relationships, humor, healing, love, and self-reflection. Each story curve, laugh line, every coil and scar, is a part of both the anatomical and socio economic landscape we navigate daily whether we are aware of it or not. The same ties that in many instances have pulled women apart, bound and kept them silent, can also strengthen.

Image: © Janice Bond