fora / squared x grace cuell

Meeting at the intersections of her interdisciplinary practice, Grace Cuell’s Soft Landing welcomes the viewer into the equivoque oasis of the artist’s mind. Mining a pastel colour palette, soft secondary fabrics, and the quilting practice for comfort and familiarity, Cuell then plunges both her characters and the viewer into an unpredictable bliss— upending the orientation of the scene with the injection of technicolour screen prints and the uncertainty of a Haring-esque figure pitching ecstatically to the ground.

Cuell’s Soft Landing suggests a life lived in a contradictory cadre of comfort and risk— moments of free fall are supported by the cushioning of the surrounding infrastructure. We do not know if the figure’s soft landing is due to their own wherewithal, or if it has been placed there since before their inception. Does the softness of the figure’s body entail a further softness of constitution, or is there an invisible backbone that can either strengthen or break as its life goes on? These multiple readings of the dreamscape permit each viewer to insert elements of their narrative into the piece, and open a dialogue that encompasses domesticity, generational privilege, and individual strength.

Cuell’s work will be displayed in the FORA window from late March to mid-May.