Mary Helena Clark, Neighboring Animals
February 13–March 30, 2024
Opens Tuesday, February 13, 6–8pm, with an artist walkthrough at 6:30pm

The Mouth is the Beginning, by Patricia L. Boyd

Cushion Works is pleased to present Neighboring Animals, a solo exhibition by artist and filmmaker Mary Helena Clark.

The title piece is a two-channel video centered on the mouth – as a tool to bite and chew, as an instrument of speech, and as a site of disgust and desire. It incorporates footage of animal dentistry, bite mark analysis, and a reliquary containing the tooth of Mary Magdalene. Projected alongside is a text collaging language from psychological studies on disgust, philosophical inquiries on human nature and animality, and poetry. An adjacent work, Recital, consists of a monitor displaying an ultrasound of the artist’s mouth while reading the Neighboring Animals text. Elsewhere, in an active workroom for pillow stuffing, hangs Untitled.

Neighboring Animals is in conjunction with Conveyor, an exhibition of the artist’s work on view at Bridget Donahue in New York through March 23.

Mary Helena Clark (born 1983, USA) lives and works in Queens, New York. Her work has been exhibited and screened nationally and internationally, including presentations at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge; Sundance Film Festival, Park City; Swedish Film Institute, Stockholm; The Gene Siskel Film Center, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; Anthology Film Archives, New York; Yerba Buena Center, San Francisco; National Gallery of Art, Washington DC; and at the New York, London, Rotterdam and Toronto International Film Festivals.

Photographs by Phillip Maisel