Ann Vollum V. 3
Penance is a textile work by Ann Vollum. Unlike other pieces within her portfolio, Penance is notably anti-commercial and even overtly aggressive, as opposed to her more consistently delicate tapestries and fiber installations conveying themes of subtle underlying macabre narratives and themes.
With Penance, there is a dichotomy between Victorian lace aesthetics and post-apocalyptic materials, such as industrial nails integrated into the textiles and resting on a piece of petrified driftwood. Such a contrast of material-based thematics reveals a neutralized texture of brown tint fastened by large ivory-colored buttons which seem to pull the entire composition of the textile. This textile’s anti-commercial sensibilities are communicated as a transformation of a Victorian antique into a post-apocalyptic artifact. A relic dedicated to being confrontational, but also revealing secrets, such as textiles covertly being a 'dark art'.
What this textile conveys would be elements of nailed, pulled, and stretched delicacy as a form of confrontation. With Penance, we embark on Ann Vollum’s sense of invented mythology. Similar to the rest of her portfolio, Penance communicates the dark aspects of Ann’s playful imagination. But unlike the rest of her work, this textile has a penchant for direct confrontation through attributes which can be described as medieval torture.
What would be referenceable to Penance would be the Shivering Isles from Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Mädchen Vivi’s performance of Hell is Here, and Sometimes I Rest Upon It. In these narratives (or anti-narratives), the concept of hell as a means of liberation and escape become apparent in Ann Vollum’s textile through macabre nailing down of delicate fibers, resting upon the driftwood like an artifact of immense ancient or enchanted power. The artifact-like attributes cannot be stressed enough in Penance, especially with the Victorian lace traits in the fastening and composure of the work, complete with macabre asymmetrically-placed nails.
The grand mythological overtones of Penance reveals how contemporary art can be used to invoke lurid conceptual approaches based in the concept of artifact as a dark art, or in this case, textiles as an enchanted totem. In such a regard, Ann Vollum continues her journey into exploring her whimsical imagination to provide provocative narratives or forms which challenge our notions of innocence, despair, and sorcery.