A virtual conversation between U.S. artist Julie Wills and Swedish author Axel Lindén, led by Helene Larsson Pousette, Cultural Counselor at the Embassy of Sweden in Washington, DC. Presented by Sweden in USA.

View ‘Rethink Tomorrow’ conversation recording here

Julie Wills created an art installation in response to Axel Lindén’s book 'Every Other Pine, Every Other Fir,' which stems from forests and reflects on the human condition and the world we live in. Wills’s exhibition was on view November 6-22, 2021 at Plain Sight Gallery in Washington, DC.

This is a recording of a conversation between the two artists that took place on November 16.

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On View: September 27, 2021 – January 23, 2022

PRESS RELEASE

Plain Sight DC and the European Union National Institutes of Culture in Washington, DC (EUNIC) are proud to present A Window to Europe: Through Literature & 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. This exhibition series is presented in partnership with the EUNIC Global and the Delegation of the European Union to the United States.

LEARN MORE

Featured Artists: Hoesy Corona, Alanna Reeves, Michael Thron, Michal Gavish, Julie Wills, MK Bailey, Antonio McAfee, Emily Fussner, Stephanie Williams, Lionel Frazier White III, and Sobia Ahmad.

Featured Writers: Lukas Jüliger, Roser Capdevila, Bernardo P. Carvalho, Julia Fiedorczuk, Axel Lindén, Drago Jančar, Marek Šindelka, Tiziano Fratus, Michael Roher, Ann De Bode, and Laurie Agusti

Exhibiting artists’ works will explore themes ranging from vulnerability, the natural world, identity, competing human economic and ecological needs, nostalgia, and the limitations of our physical bodies.

EXHIBITION SCHEDULE

Sept 27 – Oct 13
Germany: Hoesy Corona + Lukas Jüliger
Spain: Alanna Reeves + Roser Capdevila

Oct 17 – Nov 2
Portugal: Michael Thron + Bernardo P. Carvalho
Poland: Michal Gavish + Julia Fiedorczuk

Nov 6 – 22
Sweden: Julie Wills + Axel Lindén
Slovenia: MK Bailey + Drago Jančar

Nov 28 – Dec 14
Czech Republic: Antonio McAfee + Marek Šindelka
Italy: Emily Fussner + Tiziano Fratus

Dec 18 – Jan 3
Austria: Stephanie Williams + Michael Roher
Belgium (Flanders): Lionel Frazier White III + Ann De Bode

Jan 7 – 23
France: Sobia Ahmad + Laurie Agusti

About Europe Readr
The digital Europe Readr platform brings current social issues to readers around the world. It encourages reflection on the world we want to live in, presenting us with an opportunity to consider the European Union as a community in all its diversity and interconnectedness and as a community with a common future. Numerous accompanying events around the world—from Paris to Helsinki, from Washington to Beijing—encourage the creation of public spaces dedicated to reading and the exchange of ideas on the world of the future. They are organized by the Network of the European Union National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC) in cooperation with a number of local partners around the world. Europe Readr puts into practice the new paradigm of European collaboration in culture, based on dialogue and promoting culture as a driving force of sustainable development and social inclusion.

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Julie Wills
Great Lake
Montpelier Arts Center, Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission, Laurel, MD
September 12 – October 31, 2020

Video ‘virtual exhibition’ produced by Montpelier Arts Center here

From the exhibit statement:

Great Lake, the exhibit’s title, refers to a body in isolation; metaphorically speaking, the water in one lake cannot reach the water in another. These works pair and conflate isolated earthly bodies and isolated celestial bodies.

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‘Julie Wills: The Depth of Need Made Visible,’ interview by Berny Tan
Published in Asymptote, the international journal for world literature in translation, Spring 2020 issue

Full interview on the Asymptote Journal website here

A brief excerpt:

BT: Your work often utilizes words, phrases, and sentences that are disembodied from their original sources (such as textbooks), which lifts them out of their relatively sterile origins into an evocative state of metaphor and poetry. How and why did you come to use this approach? 

JW: I pull words from a variety of sources, including those that come to me as if by osmosis; some I cull from existing texts and others I write myself. I’m interested in what words do or evoke when removed from their contexts or narratives, and the potency that the simplest words or phrases acquire when paired with other words, environments, and materials. In essence, I’m interested in the malleability of language, and also in its generative power. Words do not only communicate, they also evoke, and I’m interested in this space between intent and auspice. We all talk about communication breakdowns, where one person or entity’s words are misunderstood or misinterpreted by another. But the opposite also happens—where straightforward, clear, communicative words can introduce new possibilities that have nothing to do with their speaker’s intent.

This is my interest in the seemingly benign phrases pulled from textbooks and the like. I think of my work as building relationships between language fragments that have not yet met one another. A couple of examples from a current work-in-progress that do just this—the two parts of each phrase come from two different passages of a textbook, such that the words don’t address the subject of the textbook at all:

A LITTLE SALT SPRINKLED IN THE FLAME // INTENSIFIES THE DARKENING
TWO VELOCITIES CAN BE ADDED VECTORIALLY // THERE IS NO MYSTERY ABOUT THIS

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Julie Wills
100 year flood
June 10 – August 9, 2020
Virtual opening reception: July 17, 2020, 5-7pm

Common Ground Gallery

A “hundred year flood” refers to the recurrence interval of an extreme yet statistically predictable event. In geographic or real estate terms, this demarcates the high water floodplain at times of most extreme rainfall; residents may not be prepared for such a flood, but it is not without precedent. Rather than a physical occurrence, however, this exhibit alludes to a swell of events reaching psychic or emotional limits— a surge of emotional intensity that threatens to overwhelm survival.

100 Year Flood gives visual form to emotional residue, much like the debris left behind when floodwaters abate. A line of vinyl text encircling the gallery perimeter operates as a metaphoric high water line, comprised of words and phrases related to limits, endurance, forbearance and submission. These language fragments can be read from left to right, beginning from any point. Extreme flood is used as a metaphor, with materials arranged as if deposited in place when emotional or psychological floodwaters receded.

While the origins of this exhibit precede the extraordinary events of spring 2020, it was actualized during and in response to extreme cultural unrest. Interrupted geometries and battered structural forms within the installation attest to systemic collapse, accompanied by the inferred possibility of creating something new and beautiful from the wreckage.

Virtual Exhibit on VisArts website: https://www.visartscenter.org/event/julie-wills/

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Julie Wills
Battlefields
July 5 – August 2, 2019
Opening Reception: July 5, 2019, 7-10pm

PRESS RELEASE

C for Courtside is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Maryland-based artist Julie Wills. The exhibition, titled Battlefields, uses sculpture, installation and collage to address social, political, interpersonal and interior conflict. The exhibition will be on view from July 5 through August 2, with an opening reception Friday July 5 and a closing reception Friday August 2.

Wills skillfully mines large complex systems—language, the cosmos, climate, human history—for image, text and metaphor to poetically investigate the deeply human questions nested within. Battlefields features works that explore individual joy and heartbreak in times of social or political upheaval. Diverse materials including photographs, prints, locator flags, vinyl, and plaster are arranged as a series of tactical maps for navigating or making sense of love and loss. In some instances, these works incorporate imagery from physical battle sites such as Gettysburg and the beaches of Normandy; in other cases, the site of conflict is figurative, revealed only in material vestiges.

For media and press inquiries: cforcourtside@gmail.com
Follow the gallery on Instagram: @cforcourtside

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Two of my works on paper are on view at the Institute of Contemporary Art Baltimore’s Flat Files from February-December 2019

All Flat Files works also available for purchase online through ICA Baltimore’s Flat Files Shop

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