Tying/Untying
The three phases of Tying/Untying, 2023
This durational performance echoes the frustration and reward of working together.
Phase Three: How do relationships exist in the world? A final textile product, Phase Three of Tying/Untying is a large hand-constructed soft sculpture.
Phase Three of Tying/Untying in Prince's solo exhibition Build Time at Prairie Underground, Seattle, WA 2023
Phase Two: Sitting with the leftover work of others from Phase One of Tying/Untying , Prince returns to her durational performance work, untying and utilizing the mass of material to create a wall sculpture. Prince held performance hours in her 5th Avenue at Pike Street window during XO23, July 2023.
Prince performing Phase Two of Tying/Untying in her street front window installation for XO23 at the Coliseum Theater, Seattle, WA 2023. Photo by Elisa Huerta-Enochian
Tying/Untying, phase two final performance was Thursday, July 27, 2023. The final performance was held in solidarity with women.
Phase One: Together gallery visitors arrived at this work, to tie and tangle up a pile of remnant string while Prince attempted to untie it and make a fiber installation. During the week, visitors could retie the string, take apart the artist’s work, or visit for the scheduled performance hours, when Prince returned to untie and create the wall installation. View the short documentary film by Kelly June Mitchell, made in partnership with Fiber Arts Now and The Vestibule, and the compilation of time lapse videos from Prince’s performance hours of Tying/Untying, January and February 2023.
I remain forever grateful to my amazing curator Kascha Semonovitch and The Vestibule gallery for their vision and support of phase one of this project.
This is a compiled Time-lapse video of Prince's performance hours from Phase One of Tying/Untying at The Vestibule Gallery, Seattle, WA 2023. Photo by Kelly June Mitchell.
This is a short documentary film by Kelly June Mitchell, made in partnership with Fiber Arts Now and The Vestibule, about the beginning of Tying/Untying. In collaboration with Fiber Arts Now, The Vestibule kicked-off the exhibition by inviting a group of fiber artists to gather and begin the process of tying up the material in their own way, however they wanted. You can see them here working away with each other on the material. I am interested in the way that each person arrives and joins the process, exerting their own ideas of what this means to join me in working together, tying and untying in opposition but also together.
Detail of the remnant hoody strings used for Tying/Untying, 2023 from Prairie Underground.
All the materials used for this performance are repurposed leftovers from one of my partners in the fashion industry, Prairie Underground, who also supplied my performance costume for this project. In my work, I try whenever possible, to reuse and rework material rather than use new material. I feel that as a creative person I am called to use what is at-hand in our culture, where we have so much excess. It is also a way for me to remember to not take physical items for granted.
This philosophy spills over into not taking people for granted. It makes me focus, and contemplate, how we can truly work together in our daily lives. It is complicated to not make assumptions and read into the things that happen to us and around us. To not take everything at face value, but to try to listen and look with fresh eyes. To allow people, and things around us, to shift and assert their own value , rather than the value we place on them as a culture.