‘Mechanism of proof of unpickability: Encounter 1’

Kate Howe, 2022, installation, a side altar with vintage ViewMaster, archive reels and artist’s research presented in five additional reels, with damask altar cloth and devotional painting (not shown), installation view. Collection: Susanna, Installation.

“3200, that’s how many objects I find produced between 1250 and 1750 bearing the story of Susanna and the Elders. Tapestries, medallions, paintings.

I look at my studio wall, a cold case running across centuries, and these Elders, serial abusers who keep showing up and trying to rape her. This is not a painting of a righteous woman being saved from wicked judges by a smart young god-touched boy.

These are paintings of terror. Of the moment. Of the unique cascade of conflicting emotions and impulses, perceived duties, and very real fears. These are paintings of a woman bathing in the privacy of her home who is invaded, told to be silent, threatened, and stripped nude. These are paintings of trauma.

It took a moment for me to realize what I was looking at, but these images teach. Mary Garrard writes they … “offer instruction to the wife while serving as a convenient source of pornography for the husband." It was an extremely popular wedding gift.

This gift purported to preach piety and virtue but showed violence and subjugation. This is gaslighting at an Epic scale. This is documentation of five hundred years of bias being embedded into society in plain sight. But if it was embedded, it can be taken back out, unpicked, examined, discarded.”

-Excerpts from Kate’s writing on ’Mechanism of proof of unpickability: Encounter 1’.