Infertile Soil

Live performance by Rae Goodwin

Saturday, October 8, 5-7p

In her new performance art work Rae Goodwin enacts empathetic responses to the death and dying of motherhood in many species including: bees, other pollinating insects, and humans. We rely upon beautifully strong yet fragile pollinators for a significant percentage of our food. Perhaps because of this, bees are referenced or illustrated in artwork throughout human creativity. This new performance work shines a light on their dying societies, so closely tied to ours. As a part of this examination in performance, Goodwin intertwines notions of mothering, loss and beauty as it arises from love.

Rae Goodwin, still_I wasn't ready -- a still from I wasn't ready, a video performance created for La Pocha Nostra's 2021 Virtual Intensive

Rae Goodwin, still_how could I put them down -- a still from How could I ever put them down, a performance based film, 2022

In my art practice I work with intimacy, risk and therefor vulnerability as my main material. I am also deeply concerned with maternal ancestry as it influences the construction of identity, assumptions of strength and notions of agency. Individual Grandmothers in our society, after a whole life they are seen thru the lens of their role or perceptions of their archetype and vastly undervalued. When I ask people about their own grandmothers many confess they do not know her first name, how she grew up, nor her favorite music. Many people do not wonder about her until after she has passed. The absence in presence and presence in absence of this grandmother figure in the social lives of families, leads me to think about relationships, relationality and vulnerability in my work. Often this is conveyed through archetypal or sentimental gestures, materials and interactions between myself and the viewer/participant.

Rae Goodwin, at her feet -- documentation from a live performance at Glasshouse, 2017

Artist Bio-

Rae Goodwin lives and works in Lexington, Kentucky. Her art has been exhibited widely and performed at/with the Queens Museum, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, McColl Center for Visual Art, La Pocha Nostra, Dimanche Rouge (Paris), LIVESTOCK (Dublin), defibrillator gallery (Chicago), Panoply Performance Laboratory, The Brick Theater (Brooklyn), Grace Exhibition Space (Brooklyn), Rosekill (NY), grüntaler9 (Berlin), Satellite Art Show (Miami), LUMEN (Staten Island), BIPAF (Brooklyn) and MPAB (Berlin) festivals and many other venues. She is also Professor of Art Studio and incredibly grateful for the generous support of the College of Fine Arts, the Office of the Vice President for Research and the School of Art & Visual Studies at the University of Kentucky. She earned an MFA from Winthrop University and a BA in Studio Art from Framingham State University. www.raegoodwin.com