Tiger Strikes Asteroid New York is pleased to present FALSE ILLUSION, an exhibition featuring new work by Stephanie J. Woods, our summer open call recipient.

FALSE ILLUSION is an astonishing work engaged in a historical ‘Sharpie dilemma’ where you can’t quite retrace, where it is impossible to erase, where you attempt to remake. It is diligent and challenged in its simultaneous erasure and preservation. The invisible irony of these textile narratives gathered and tapered along the walls like curtains provide no breeze—instead, you will feel the heat of it, the imperceptible weight and wait of it.

The exhibition features a series of large-scale textile paintings incorporating mixed media. Polished furniture vinyl laminates the textiles, turning them sculptural. Woods is critically engaged with black performativity, creating with careful and dangerous skill what may be discovered as the ‘Black Venn Diagram.’ The incomprehensible and overlapping relationship between truth and contradiction, between inheritance and advancement, and the impossible labor of black narrative and transparency.

It offers you no exit, this black life hung in the shape of a window,

                       Here: pretend the edges are metal

                                                           and everything in gold—medals.

This arrowed work of foil and fleece,

                       Sharpie, vinyl, and thread weaves cathedrals of inquiry

                                                           the debt of our identity

                                                           our inherited

                                                           structural constraint

the boundary of being bordered, the memory trapped in resin:

‘memba that time on Bruce Hill Blvd when we fast-forwarded and rewinded

at the same time, felt like we were trapped in a frame, our teeth chandeliers in

slow collision, our fathers loose leaf paper?

  - Text by Laura Neal

Stephanie J. Woods is a multimedia artist from Charlotte, NC creating textile, photography, video, and community-engaged projects. Woods earned an MFA from UNC Greensboro and is the recipient of several residencies and fellowships, including Halcyon Arts Lab social impact fellowship, the Fine Arts Work Center fellowship, ACRE Residency, the McColl Center for Art +Innovation, Ox-Bow School of Art and Artists’ Residency, and Penland School of Craft. Woods has exhibited her work at the Mint Museum uptown, the Harvey B. Gantt Center for African American Art + Culture, and Smack Mellon. Her work has been featured in publications such as Art Papers, Burnaway, and the Boston Art Review. Additionally, her artwork has been notably recognized by the Chenven Foundation, the South Arts State Fellowship, and the North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship Award