Martha Wilson

When I first came into the gallery space at Inova, I wasn't really sure where to start and just started from left to right. This started me off at the archive of works from Franklin Furnace and I was really confused on how this was Wilson's work until I realized that she was just the director of this and chose these specific pieces to go side by side her own show. I didn't get to piece that together until I finally made my way around the entire thing and ended up at the beginning as my last stop. I thought it was interesting to piece everything together after I had seen it all, not knowing what I was looking at or the content of her work. Left to my own thoughts, I couldn't find a general theme because the variety of media used was so large and I couldn't quite pinpoint one solid idea underlying each piece. I had to accept it as what it was in front of me, which even then, I couldn't quite understand what the back story was. It wasn't until after reading the description of the show and learning a bit more about her and her views that I was able to gain somewhat of an understanding on the content that she was addressing and dealing with. It may have been because I had no idea what it was about until after seeing all of the work and talking about it at the Portrait Society, but I felt that there was somewhat of a disconnect in the two gallery shows. I felt a barrier between the work and I at Inova, whereas at the Portrait Society, I felt like I was able to come to a complete understanding of what she was really saying and that I was able to engage and connect with her work. I'm not sure, however, that I would have came to the same conclusion had we not discussed it in such depth, which is neither here nor there, but something to take note of.