By Kirstin Ohrt
Department of Art & Archaeology
Practice of Art Senior Emma Mohrmann’s exhibition So Soft You Can Barely Feel the Seams embodies the tension between feeling comforted and feeling trapped. “It’s about defining that line between comfort and constriction, specifically in places that one might call home or in relationships with loved ones,” said Mohrmann.
The exhibition begins with a progression of five soft sacks, plump with sawdust stuffing and cinched with aluminum wire, that lead to a super-scaled slug-like sack, itself capable of hugging or trapping.
A lot of my work is thinking about a human touch. As the world gets ever more mechanized, I’m trying to add my own human dimension back in.
—Emma Mohrmann ’24
Central to the exhibition, a series of four works—“the weavings,” as Mohrmann calls them—begins with a long, off-white textile crafted using traditional techniques. Beside it hangs a work that incorporates a few personal materials and bricks. Next, in a monumental, floor-to-ceiling work, Mohrmann has used a pallet as the loom, with more personal items like shredded t-shirts woven through but also wrapped around the wood and again bricks weighting down the bottom. Finally, centered in the gallery stands one more pallet in which Mohrmann has deconstructed the traditional form further, weaving only with the bricks themselves and wrapping the wood structure with personal items and her own hand-made paper.
Exhibition Video Tour with Emma Mohrmann
Another theme is intertwined that Mohrmann is considering more intensely as her Princeton experience comes to a close: that of permanence and the lack thereof. The bricks, for example, are among the most permanent of building materials, yet those in her work are from structures in her hometown, St. Louis, that no longer stand. Inversely, construction materials are thought to be necessarily impermanent and yet they represent a constant in Mohrmann’s experience of campus. Representing this, bright orange barrier mesh is draped from the ceiling, wrapped in places with threads derived from Mohrmann’s hand-made paper. In a nearby corner, a collection of tall narrow woodblock prints includes one in which Mohrmann has carved away the shape of the shadow that the mesh cast on the block.
Mohrmann’s own memories and affinities are bound up in the works. “I use a lot materials that have an intense personal history for me,” she said. Each of the bricks from St. Louis, for example, she knows the precise origin of. The threads of paper wrapped throughout the exhibition she made herself from plants she grew. T-shirt strips have a personal provenance. “A lot of my work is thinking about a human touch,” Mohrmann said. As the world gets ever more mechanized, she said, “I’m trying to add my own human dimension back in.”
So Soft You Can Barely Feel the Seams is on view in Lucas Gallery from April 22-May 3, 2024.
Exhibition Photos
"So Soft You Can Barely Feel the Seams," an exhibition by senior Emma Mohrmann '24 on view in the Lucas Gallery April 22 - May 3. Photo by Jon Sweeney
"So Soft You Can Barely Feel the Seams," an exhibition by senior Emma Mohrmann '24 on view in the Lucas Gallery April 22 - May 3. Photo by Jon Sweeney
"So Soft You Can Barely Feel the Seams," an exhibition by senior Emma Mohrmann '24 on view in the Lucas Gallery April 22 - May 3. Photo by Jon Sweeney
"So Soft You Can Barely Feel the Seams," an exhibition by senior Emma Mohrmann '24 on view in the Lucas Gallery April 22 - May 3. Photo by Jon Sweeney
So Soft You Can Barely Feel the Seams, an exhibition by senior Emma Mohrmann '24 on view in the Lucas Gallery April 22 - May 3. Photo by Jon Sweeney
"So Soft You Can Barely Feel the Seams," an exhibition by senior Emma Mohrmann '24 on view in the Lucas Gallery April 22 - May 3. Photo by Jon Sweeney
So Soft You Can Barely Feel the Seams, an exhibition by senior Emma Mohrmann '24 on view in the Lucas Gallery April 22 - May 3. Photo by Jon Sweeney
So Soft You Can Barely Feel the Seams, an exhibition by senior Emma Mohrmann '24 on view in the Lucas Gallery April 22 - May 3. Photo by Jon Sweeney
