Katie Shulman on Ropes Of, April 4-18:

“Desire, hunger and their bodily expressions have embarrassed me everywhere but inside my studio. While I avoided embodied unruliness in my day to day life, I have been possessed by the need to manipulate material into manifesting something so human it could be sensed or felt by an onlooker.

My sculptures are relics of small dances between myself and my material partners. They are ossified objects constructed through a sequence of liberating movements born from an obsession with productivity mixed with an appetite for discovery. The small dance of my art practice is so visceral it is reminiscent of the phases of my menstrual cycle: one ends with a shedding of a sculpture that is often the color and shape of insides.

Then, on March 13th, 2024, I gave birth to my son. Two days later, milk flooded into my breasts– they have been leaking and squirting ever since. While in the past, I could only welcome and relish the fact that all bodies are unruly when I was lost in the meditation of ripping, knotting, bending, knitting and rope making, now, for the first time in my life, I am thrilled by my unconstrained body.

I am turning C.Y.N.K Studios into a Lactating Room: a space filled with unruly sculptures and material milk. Instead of a Lactation Room, which is a private space where a mother can nurse and pump, the Lactating Room will welcome anyone who seeks nourishment in softness and abundance.”