Among Women (the List) 2018

Curator: Immediately, I think of library card catalogs, full of secrets. There's a certain warmth radiating, something human and maybe slightly melancholy in the arrangement of cards in the aged wooden box. Editor: This mixed-media piece is "Among Women (the List)," created by Harriet Bart in 2018. It's an assemblage, predominantly of wood, but the impact hinges on these precisely ordered index cards filling that box. The wooden container shows signs of use, bearing traces from a previous industrial life that hints at a narrative before it became a vessel of art. Curator: The index cards... They hint at countless narratives, individual experiences distilled into this almost architectural form. You get the sense each card carries weight. I wonder, does this list conceal a community? Is each card a memory, a marker of womanhood experienced? I imagine that tracing its creation would reveal the labor of love that breathes life into cold documentation. Editor: I agree, it is absolutely intriguing to try to figure out what those narratives were; it makes us want to research, analyze, or study this archive. Considering its physical construction—the reclaimed wood, the aged paper—it provokes contemplation on production and consumption. Think of the labor involved, both historically in the initial creation of these materials and now in the careful reassembling for an art context. There's a tension between the functional history of these elements and their present existence as conceptual art. Curator: The patina on that wooden box suggests generations, the kind of touch that settles over cherished, useful objects, right? And within it, that systematic assembly…it seems Bart is exploring how collections, and systems can contain something almost magical about people. The simple act of writing something down, repeated over and over, has the ability to evoke feeling and community. Editor: Ultimately, Bart seems to confront how we make and mark meaning by investigating material and process. It invites us to explore and celebrate the tangible nature of information. Curator: Right. To contemplate women, memory, and lists, all bundled in that beautiful object. It is really something. Editor: Absolutely. "Among Women (the List)" is certainly something, that compels us to re-evaluate everyday archives with wonder.