More Plural Words: Sophia Mason
October 4 - October 25 | Opening Reception, Saturday, October 4, 1 PM–9 PM| Guided Tour at COOP Gallery with artist, Oct. 4, 6 PM
Detail of Parasite Lapis Ecclesiae
COOP is pleased to present More Plural Worlds by Sophia Mason. More Plural Worlds takes the form of a quirky natural history exhibit about the Great Salt Lake and its ecosystem. The Great Salt Lake is known for its extreme saline environment and visible geology. Through soft sculptures, sculptures, text, drawings, and prints, the show serves as a metaphor for American feminism. Feminism’s values and gains build on the past like layers of sediment. Those layers preserve radical shifts and fossils of influential outliers to the movement. The exhibit also admits to how our views of this past are being revised, the same way scientific perspectives change with new research. Fabric and sewing are the primary link between metaphor and meaning as the material relates to traditional American “women’s work” and also feminist artists who used soft sculpture to raise consciousness about their social positions.
Mason draws on personal data, traditional sewing skills and recent research on American feminism (specifically Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s Pulitzer Prize winning A House Full of Females) to trace a feminist, anti-racist family tree that compelled her towards feminism. The implications of her particular experience loom large. Our cultures must adapt for us to survive well. More Plural Worlds walks through the messy adaptation process with a comforting, playful, accessible nature that compels viewers to re-learn, revise, or discover new inclusive pasts they can link to their futures. This will be Mason’ first exhibition in Nashville, and the artist will be present at the opening reception and at COOP Gallery on October 4th. Mason will be leading a Nature Center Guided Tour of the space at 6pm.
More about the Artist
Sophia Mason is an artist and curator living in Memphis, TN. Her work explores objects and materials like an archivist. The soft sculpture techniques she puts to work honor traditional sewing, but apply broadly to embrace feminist history. Often there is humor where the purposes of these two forces meet. She has shown work in Memphis at the Brooks Museum and the Dixon Gallery and Gardens as well as at Crosstown Arts and the Museum of History and Science. Most recently she showed work at ArtFields in South Carolina and will have six works included in Field Guide at St. Louis’s Lambert Airport in 2025. Sophia Mason attended Rhodes College and the University of Memphis for her MFA in Sculpture. She has written and published images of her work in the feminist periodical, Exponent II, and written for Burnaway.