Circa 2012

Curator: Here we have Valerie Jaudon’s "Circa," an acrylic on canvas piece completed in 2012. It's quite a statement with its interlocking white lines over a warm brown background. What strikes you about it? Editor: Immediate sense of visual entanglement. It’s like a knot, or perhaps a maze, but one where there are no real dead ends—just constant loops and redirections. There's a nervous energy despite the simple palette. Curator: Absolutely. Jaudon was deeply influenced by the Pattern and Decoration movement. You can see how she reclaims traditionally 'feminine' crafts through her interest in ornamentation. Do you think there is a correlation between women's historical roles in ornamentation and their simultaneous social/political constraints, historically speaking? Editor: The domestic sphere, often coded as feminine, becomes both a site of confinement and artistic rebellion. "Circa" could symbolize the invisible architecture of social constraints. Jaudon's use of repeated motifs almost feels like she's breaking out from this imposed order. What do you mean by reclamation, here? Curator: Instead of just ornamentation serving a strictly decorative function—something to passively look at—Valerie endows ornamentation with symbolic weight and visual dominance that forces the viewer into an experience of constant motion as if their eyes were trying to solve a visual equation! Jaudon subverts the historic notion that ornaments should not serve any other purpose than embellishment by embracing them in a manner where form IS content. The labyrinth becomes not a prison but a kind of self-defined world. A playful rejection of art historical macho dogma? Editor: A very neat push-and-pull. On one hand it suggests visual entrapment, yes. But the warm palette gives it a really unexpected feeling of welcome and comfort that counteracts the initial feeling of constraint, to me. It is not a sterile "maze"—but rather, almost has a soothing rhythm that almost forces you to slow down in order to be able to grasp each singular shape individually. Perhaps that's where the reclamation and subversion lives. It turns the historically diminutive decorative arts into monumental acts of controlled agency and self expression! Curator: I see it too! I hadn’t thought about the sense of "welcome" you mention; almost beckoning one inside, if only we knew where it leads! Editor: Right? It becomes less about solving the puzzle and more about reveling in the infinite possibilities, even if you are stuck within "the circle." It reminds me of Saidiya Hartman's notion of critical fabulation. This entanglement holds untold possibilities to reconstruct and rewrite our perceived confines. Thanks for walking through that maze with me! Curator: And thank you for pulling me further down the path—who knows where it'll lead...