A WINDOW TO EUROPE: THROUGH ART & LITERATURE
FEATURING MK BAILEY
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, MK Bailey creates work in response to Slovenian writer Drago Jančar’s book The Tree with No Name.
This exhibition is presented in partnership with EUNIC DC, the EU Delegation to the United States, and the Embassy of Slovenia in Washington, D.C.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION: Translating her two-dimensional style of layered flat silhouettes and experimental landscapes, MK Bailey creates a florid setting pulled from the pages of Drago Jančar’s book The Tree with No Name. Between the layers inspired by the novel’s rich imagery, the audience will lose the thread between one reality and another, ricocheting between nostalgia, displaced identity, and anxiety about the present.
MK Bailey creates narrative, figure-based paintings and experimental landscapes that reflect her experience of the world. She uses oil, acrylic, and digital mediums to explore themes of loneliness, nostalgia, and the tension between dream and reality. MK lives and works in Washington, DC.
Drago Jančar, born in Maribor, Slovenia, in 1948. He studied law and worked as a journalist, editor, and freelance writer. In 1985, he spent time in the USA as a Fulbright Fellow, and in 1988 in Germany. Slovenia's most prominent author has been described as “the seismologist of a chaotic history.” His novels and short stories have been translated and published in many European languages and in the USA. His plays have also seen a number of foreign productions.
In 2003, he was awarded the Herder Prize for literature. Other awards include the
Jean Améry Prize for Essays, Frankfurt Book Fair 2007; the
Hemingway Prize, Lignano, Italy 2009; the
Le Prix Européen de Littérature, Strasbourg 2011; the
Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Prize for the Best Foreign Book – I Saw Her That Night), Paris 2014; and the
Austrian State Prize for European Literature, Salzburg 2020
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.
