Gatlinburg TN - Arrowmont - Wet Data | Gabe Duggan

Wet Data | Gabe Duggan

Jerry Drown Wood Studio Gallery

Gabe Duggan (b. Buffalo, NY), Assistant Professor at East Carolina University, combines techniques of traditional fiber work with disparate materials and contexts to explore physical and social tension. They have taught fibers/textiles at the University of North Texas, Georgia State University and North Carolina State University.

Duggan's work has been supported by the NC Arts Council (RAPG), Art on the Atlanta Beltline (GA), Vignette Art Fair (TX), Artspace PopUp (NC); exhibitions at the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Flanders, and Lump (NC), Garis & Hahn (New York, NY by AH Arts); residencies at the Musk Ox Farm (AK), Art and Science in the Field (NC), IndieGrits (SC), Governors Island Art Fair (NY), Artspace (NC); as a Knight Foundation Emerging Artist at Ponyride (MI), a Fellow at Salem Art Works (NY), and an R.R. Dunn Artist in Residence at Adrian Smith's laboratory in the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences.

I push material and social boundaries in my work by establishing and challenging binary systems through repetitive tension and balance. By constructing installations and objects that combine techniques of fiber work with disparate materials I push expectations of traditional work. Ambiguity plays an important role in my work, signifying slippage of power from one subject to another. Through suggestive text, calculated balancing, or the build up of potential energy, I present power as elusive rather than fixed; socially-constructed and upheld.

My work echoes inequalities within contemporary performances of gender and exhibitions of power. When performing with sound, image, or as image, I step into these roles directly inhabiting spaces of both lost and self-possessed agency. I use fiber systems of tension and balance to reflect social, political, and historical implications of power.  

SEE MORE OF GABE'S WORK AT WWW.GABRIELLEDUGGAN.COM