Dana Nechmad’s paintings investigate the dynamic tension of female existence. Her work speaks through imprints of sexuality and fertility, pleasure and pain, pushing through and letting go–action sets intrinsic to life and being, that too often are written off as taboo by a patriarchal society.
Incorporating the laborious process of hand-dying and needlepoint threading, Nechmad creates textile-based works characterized by sanguine colors and textures evocative of the corporeal. Her figures are suspended in time and space, mid-movement, reveling as simple shapes composing a dynamic and transitional action.
Nechmad focuses on the visceral nature of physical memory through a female lens; every bruise, every scrape, every touch is recorded and informs the holistic identity. Her process–a highly physical performance–sees traces of dye added to fiber and subsequently removed by using corrosive chemicals like bleach; a creative act of mark-making simultaneously destroys the canvas. The artist’s chosen color palette explores the array of complex hues created within and by the body, the life-sustaining fluids its organs produce, sustain, lose and regain throughout one’s life cycle.
