Backwards Shhh

2024

Gaa Gallery, New York, New York

Through the incorporation of a variety of traditional and found objects, materials, and imagery, the works across Backwards Shhhh legitimize manifold interpretations of their condition and being. Their universal, visual language acts as an invitation for excavation, exploration and an embodiment of feeling. Basking in the ruby red essence of I am a Mom, one enters a state of meditative reflection – complicated feelings of pride, joy, love, grief, shame, self-doubt, loneliness, independence, and agency rise to the surface. This light refuses to be contained, permeating the space and imparting its energy and influence on everything within its reach.

This profound influence of color continues across the series Etels Up Trap, each work abounding with a dynamism stemming from the conscious embrace of play and volatility. Black and white photographs – sewn onto the surface through a pattern of shapes and lines – subtly exist amidst a roiling sea of texture and color, gestural marks reminiscent of the makers’ hands teeming throughout. A collective effort between not only Dani and Sheilah ReStack, but also their daughter Sky, these pieces act as a visual journal, weaving a thread between one moment, place, or time, and another.

Similarly, 18 Wolves as Aides, a multi-part book and drawing by Dani ReStack including marks made by their eldest daughter Rose’s charcoal-coated feet dancing on the paper, presents a collage of photographs and text posing open-ended questions of what it means to be a mother or caretaker. How can one be responsible for another human, when one’s own wounds are so quick to surface? Oscillating between a general understanding and a personal experience, these works highlight shared struggles and achievements on both a macro and a micro level and underscore the ways in which imagery and ideas are disseminated globally and specifically.