Liberation Textiles: Our Social Fabric presents the work of thirty-four contemporary artists who explore myriad aspects of freedom and what it means today, at a time that demands an immediate urgency to revise both the ideas and ideals of freedom. It is a complicated concept that does not (and cannot) exist in a vacuum. The very act of making art is a testament to human agency, so in a sense, all art bears witness to freedom. Pure freedom is an abstract idea, and our experience of it is situational. We often understand it as a direct result of experiencing its loss. When we are arrested for expressing political opinions, we understand freedom of speech. When persecuted for religious, racial or sexual identity, we understand a lack of personal freedom. When governments strip us of healthcare autonomy, we understand a lack of bodily freedom. So, while this exhibition explores freedom in the affirmative, the works also investigate the loss and want of freedom, such as in Erin M. Riley’s tapestry weaving Inaudible, which explores the confinement of emotional trauma.

For over three decades, Portia Munson (b. 1961) has created maximal installations, sculptures, paintings, and digital prints using a vast accumulation of ready-made consumer products to decipher the latent cultural codes embedded in mass-produced items. Munson lives and works in Catskill, NY. She holds a BFA from Cooper Union, an MFA from Rutgers University, and studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She has been awarded residencies at institutions including Fountainhead, Miami, FL; Woodman Residency Foundation, Tuscany, Italy; Civitella Ranieri, Umbertide, Italy; MacDowell Colony for the Arts, Peterborough, NH; Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, MA; and Yaddo, Saratoga Springs, NY, as well as a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2019. Her work has been the subject of over twenty solo exhibitions at Museum of Sex, New York, NY; P·P·O·W, New York, NY; White Columns, New York, NY; MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; and Olana State Historic Site, Hudson, NY, among others. Munson’s work has also been in numerous international group exhibitions including Cross Pollination: Heade, Cole, Church, and our Contemporary Moment, Olana State Historic Site, Hudson, NY; Dime-Store Alchemy, curated by Jonathan Rider, FLAG Art Foundation, New York, NY; Beyond Boundaries: Feminine Forms, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Rituals of Devotion, the McEvoy Foundation for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; and Bad Girls, curated by Marcia Tucker, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY, among others. Her public works include Pink Projects with the Art Production Fund, Rockefeller Center, New York, NY; Art in the Terminal, the Albany International Airport, Albany, NY; MTA Arts for Transit, Bryant Park MTA Station, New York, NY; and a permanent Metropolitan Transit Authority installation in Brooklyn, NY. In Summer 2022, Munson presented three solo exhibitions, Bound Angel, P·P·O·W, New York, NY; Portia Munson: Flood, Art Omi, Ghent, NY; and Memento Mori, Pamela Salisbury Gallery, Hudson, NY. In 2023, Munson presented Portia Munson: The Pink Bedroom at the Museum of Sex, New York, NY.