Ewa Bloch

The Unravelers #7 (2011)
India ink, string from unraveled canvas, collage on paper
13 x 8.5 in.

The works on paper in the series, The Unravelers, deal primarily with iconography and identity, exploring notions of the feminine in art, culture, and artistic practice. In The Unravelers, formally loose, haphazard gestures are layered under collaged digital prints of the same, featureless female figure, whose anonymity allows for her to be read more in a symbolic sense than a specific one.

With washy grounds of inks, acrylics and nail polish on paper, and three-dimensional strings of unraveled canvas, a chaotic and abstract yet, to some degree, highly anticipated environment emerges, and surrounds this anonymous female figure. Whether this woman is defining her environment, responding to the gestural marks or even directly interacting with them like another figure, her role is always changing, formally and metaphorically complicating the notion of the feminine.

© Ewa Bloch