Threads in Time

Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition 2024

Matthew Gilbert | Nicole Hixon | Zeinab Manesh

September 28, 2024 - November 24, 2024
Saturdays & Sundays 1:00 - 5:00 pm
& by appointment

Opening Reception
Saturday September 28, 4:00 - 6:00 pm

Newburgh Open Studios
Extended hours, with the artists
Saturday September 28 - Sunday September 29
12:00 - 6:00 pm

Two Coats of Paint Hudson Valley Gallery Crawl
Saturday, October 19 - Sunday, October 20
Interactive map here.

Gallery Talks
Saturday October 19, 2:00 pm

Exhibition and events are free & open to the public

Threads in Time brings together the work of Ann Street Gallery 2024 Emerging Artist Fellows Matthew Gilbert, Nicole Hixon, and Zeinab Manesh, whose sculptures and installations interweave representations of past, present, and future to connect individual identity and cultural heritage across eras. In a world marked by division and displacement, the artists’ reflections on isolation, belonging, and transformation encourage us to consider the legacies we leave behind and the ways in which art can both preserve and reshape our understanding of the world.

Works using fibers, found and recycled materials, paper, and glass serve as vessels for memory and shared identity, transcending time and place as the artists contemplate and locate moments of balance between impermanence and endurance. Where the materials used are at odds with the images or forms they represent, notions of nature and culture intersect, storytelling becomes nonlinear, and the specters of disenfranchised communities surface amidst a heightened sense of absence.

Gilbert’s set-like installations and pictorial rugs employ a queer aesthetic with a dark sense of humor, blending anachronistic architectural elements, craft materials, and distorted representations of space to convey feelings of yearning, contemporary isolation, and the search for support. Inspired by her personal experiences as a city-born multiethnic artist, Hixon’s innovative use of recycled materials challenges viewers to reconsider the value of discarded objects, forging new narratives from the remnants of the past. Manesh’s delicate glass work captures the fragility and beauty of transformation in the intricate floral patterns of Islimi carpet design, reflecting on the unheard voices of Iranian women, especially female carpet makers with unseen disabilities. The exhibition attests to the resilience of the human spirit, navigating threads across time that bind the artists to each other, their cultures, and the natural world.

Learn more about our 2024 Fellows here and our robust Fellowship Program here.

The exhibition checklist can be downloaded here.