A WINDOW TO EUROPE: THROUGH ART & LITERATURE
FEATURING JULIE WILLS
November 6 - 22, 2021
Plain Sight DC and the EU National Institutes of Culture in Washington, DC present A Window to Europe: Through Literature and Art, a series of short exhibitions featuring eleven visual artists from the Washington, DC region who will create work in response to eleven books by European writers, as part of the 2021 Europe Readr project. In this exhibition, Julie Wills creates work in response to Swedish writer Axel Lindén’s book Every Other Pine, Every Other Fir.
This exhibition is presented in partnership with EUNIC DC, the EU Delegation to the United States, and the Embassy of Sweden in Washington D.C.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION: Julie Wills’ immersive installation, A Forest, is like a drawing in space, a vertical arrangement of materials and words—both natural/found, and manmade/composed—pairing found objects and materials with language fragments in ways that generate new metaphors through proximity. This constructed “forest” also contains a series of short texts, language fragments, and words, some by Axel Linden and some by Wills herself, arranged in such a way that they cannot be read in any clear order, but are rather stumbled upon while looking between. Linden’s text, Every Other Pine, Every Other Fir is an effort to make sense of complex and competing human needs—economic and ecological. The materials used in this installation further conflate the natural and constructed worlds, while taking into consideration Plain Sight’s urban and [post-]commercial surroundings.
Julie Wills is an interdisciplinary artist working in the expanded field of sculpture, including installation, collage, performance, video, and architectural interventions. Recent solo exhibits have been presented at VisArts, Rockville, MD; C for Courtside, Knoxville, TN; Arlington Arts Center, Arlington, VA; IA&A at Hillyer, Washington, DC; and Whittier College, Los Angeles, CA. She is a 2019 recipient of an Individual Artist Award from the Maryland State Arts Council, and has been awarded recent artist residencies at Cill Rialaig (Ireland), Arteles (Finland), Jentel, PLAYA, The Hambidge Center, and Pyramid Atlantic Art Center, among others. Her works are included in the White Columns Artist Registry in New York and the ICA Baltimore’s Flat Files Program. Wills is an Assistant Professor of Studio Art at Washington College in Chestertown, MD.
Axel Lindén (1972) holds a PhD in literary sciences, and now lives with his family on a farm in southern Sweden. He debuted with a book on sheep farming and life, which became a major hit and has been translated into eight languages. He received the Aftonbladets Literature Prize for his essayist, philosophical and reflective writing last year.
A Window Through Europe
This exhibition is part of A Window to Europe: Through Literature and Art, a series of short exhibitions featuring eleven visual artists from the Washington, DC region who are creating work in response to eleven books by European writers, as part of the 2021 Europe Readr project. Featured artists are Hoesy Corona, Alanna Reeves, Mike Thron, Michal Gavish, Julie Wills, MK Bailey, Antonio McAfee, Emily Fussner, Stephanie Williams, Lionel Frazier White III, and Sobia Ahmad.
