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South Florida multidisciplinary artist Kelcie McQuaid confronts loss, grief, memory and survival in a highly personal project called LINEAGE, whose creation demanded more of her than any art she’s ever previously made.
“It’s about what gets passed down through blood, through habit, through shame and sometimes through acceptance,” artist, curator, and scene champion McQuaid says of the exhibition at Bailey Contemporary Arts. ”It’s about how memory lives in our bodies.”
Employing objects from childhood, family portraiture, projections, textiles, petri dishes and more in a mixed-media panorama, LINEAGE also draws on McQuaid’s deep connections to South Florida musicians: One piece incorporates their sonic contributions, all part of an experimental undertaking informed by emotion, intuition and vulnerability.
“This show was born out of a lot of heartbreak over the last decade,” McQuaid says. A string of untimely deaths in her family hit hard. “I tried to quit art,” she says. “I broke down, but then I kept going.” In the midst of still more losses close to home, the first inklings of what would become LINEAGE took shape in her mind. Bolstered by an Artist Innovation Grant from Broward Cultural Division and Community Foundation of Broward, McQuaid forged ahead. “It’s been the most cathartic and difficult work of my life so far,” she says.
Some works put familiar elements into unexpected settings. “Placenta” is composed of 600 bio-art pieces employing household items and materials from childhood. McQuaid used each item to grow mold in petri dishes and then sealed them in resin for display.
Spread across all three galleries is a series called “Chemical Reaction,” sixteen mixed-media works made in response to soundscapes from more than a dozen local musicians including Lindsey Mills of Surfer Blood, Brady Newbill of Nervous Monks, and Chris Horgan of Sweet Bronco.
“I selected these musicians and asked them to respond to the question, ‘Who in your early life made you feel most accepted?’” McQuaid says. “The results are gut-wrenching compositions of sound, and the correlating family stories they told are just as moving.”
LINEAGE at Bailey Contemporary Arts Center in Pompano Beach runs through September 13.
