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A fence is a line that binds and divides. It is through this form that the works in this exhibition hold the human condition at a distance precise enough to see it clearly: its existential angst, its silence, its disconnection. Yet that precise distance reveals an uncertain connection where liminality is not a threshold to be crossed but a condition to be inhabited, disorderly, entangled, and circling back on itself in a desire to find comfort and togetherness.
Open Fences holds both the structure and the rupture simultaneously. Fences and gates are woven to relinquish a memory of the past and rebuild it into the present, and in that opening, the viewer is invited to enter, to stand at the threshold, to feel the pull between enclosure and release, between what the line holds and what it lets through. It stands, and it opens.
Each practice in this exhibition returns to the line differently, yet each is bound by it. In her hand-woven jacquard and yarn works, Sabiha Dohadwala spans the distance between architectural rigidity and the tender, repetitive labor that unfolds behind it in The Wall that Wore Lace, The Window that Grew a Garden and A Room that Breathed in Stitches. Using threads to reconstruct memory by destructing the image, she chooses what details to keep or remove, finding The Pattern that Sprouted in the Gaps while A Conversation Held in Hands.