ARTIST STATEMENT
My work consists of drawings, books, and wall hangings that examine power dynamics evident throughout history and my own lived experience. These fabric works use historic ways of making—the quilt and the sewing sampler—as formal and conceptual frameworks to investigate questions of belonging and legacy. They incorporate objects and materials that connect me to my childhood home, as well as iconographic images that synthesize a period of personal and political instability.
I grew up in the postcolonial environment of the South Pacific, in the specific context of my parents’ generations-long mission work and the broader socio-political narratives of the area. The experience of being an outsider to both the location of my upbringing and to my home country leads me to look for the materials and behaviors that signify being an insider, as well as the ephemeral records a place accumulates as a result of the people who live there. I’m interested in the ways that history is embedded in a given place—its landmarks, language, records, and geography—all of which reveal underlying power structures.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Corrie Thompson is an artist, educator, and independent curator. She is president and cofounder of Easyside, an artist-run nonprofit, which is both a home for contemporary art and a hub for food access on the East side of Fort Worth, Texas. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art at North Park University in 2013. In 2022, she earned her Master of Fine Arts in Painting from Texas Christian University, where she received a graduate fellowship and several college research grants.
Thompson’s work has been featured in solo exhibitions at the Old Jail Art Center (Albany, TX), North Park University (Chicago, IL), Blind Alley Projects (Fort Worth, TX), and Moudy Art Gallery (Fort Worth, TX). Recent group exhibition spaces in North Texas include Arts Fort Worth, Moncrief Cancer Institute, Craighead Green Gallery, and PRP Gallery. In 2018, she curated the exhibition Mysterious Feelings at Circle Contemporary Gallery (Chicago, IL), and in 2022 and 2023, she co-curated the exhibitions Frontside/Backside and After Sense with Easyside. This spring, Thompson juried the Artist Mama Fund competition, a project organized by artist Christian Cruz. Her work and writing have been published in Mother’s Days (Lenka Clayton, 2020) and Shelter in Place: Artist Mothers Work (Tulika Ladsariya and Angela Lopez, 2021).
© Corrie Thompson