Courtney Treglia
Courtney Treglia is a text-based textile artist and writer who has written two books to date, an anthology of poems titled Lost Objects & Found Memories and the science fiction novel On Red Planets Do Birds Sing. She has exhibited extensively in New York since 2016 in venues such as Macy Gallery, Gallery MC, The Smith Learning Center, and multiple galleries at the School of Visual Arts. Courtney is a graduate from Columbia University with a background in Art / Art Education and works as a Director of Operations at the School of Visual Arts.
Incorporating the written word, printmaking, bed sheets, and hand-stitched fibers, the textiles works of Courtney Treglia uses the symbolism of a jester as a counter-reaction to trauma. Specifically, Courtney Treglia experienced numerous abusive messages from an ex-partner which traumatized her into stopping her consistent creation of artworks. These jester textiles are a response to such trauma after a period of time dealing with the impact. As a result, the infused texts with the jesters deal with the traumatic experience of abuse through a layered manner. Autobiographical texts such as “We were young, and every disagreement ended in a break…I thought it was too soon, but I let it go...I realized it was a shallow sense of happy”, reveals journal-like entries infused into the artworks. Much of the texts is hidden, with only bits and pieces of passages cutout and interweaved throughout the compositions of the jesters, while a few passages are made clearer.
These text-infused hot-magenta jesters Courtney Treglia has constructed have sad porcelain faces and intricately patterned costumes with vivid lines. Because the jester is a symbol for the fool, or rather in the case of these textile works, they are sort-of self-portraits of the artist trying to please others at her own expense. Courtney also uses the jester as a symbol of her works because historically they were the only figures in the entire kingdom who can express the complaints of the people to the monarch in the form of comedy. The caps Courtney Treglia creates on the jesters are a mockery of the crown, cartoonish hats which shift from jester to queen, revealing a climax of reclamation and empowerment.
These hot-magenta pale-porcelain text-infused jesters sewn into bed sheets reveal deeply psychological and sociological experimentation in not only textile art, but also mixed-media applications which are also almost performative in nature (i. e. used bed sheets). Such sad tormented clowns, fools, and jesters reveal a narrative in purging the trauma of abuse by infusing emotions into symbolic characters who can form a rebellion, in the form of power and comedy. Power in having the monarch’s ear but also provocative laughter at herself and at her tormentor simultaneously. The jester ‘shifts’ from being a subject of self-degradation to one of empowerment through the formation of the series. Such nuance in the works reveals a deeply conceptual approach which goes far beyond mere design principles and technique, but rather a communication in constructing a narrative to confront the demons which haunt and disturb us.
In summary, the jester textiles by Courtney Treglia not only advances the purpose of text-based artworks and text-based fragments, but also constructing narratives in contemporary discourse to have greater impact in layered applications. Through the struggle of trauma and using the symbolism of an assembled jester, these textile configurations represent a profound sorrow but also a rebellion against those who seek to persecute and subjugate us into submission.
