Trying to get all my birds to land in the yard
Mychaelyn Michalec: Trying to get all my birds to land in the yard
K Contemporary
1412 Wazee Street, Denver, CO 80202
April 13 - May 25, 2024
Curated by Doug Kacena
Admission: free
Review by Maggie Sava
Mychaelyn Michalec’s first major solo exhibition at K Contemporary—since joining the gallery’s roster two years ago—showcases new directions and experiments in her fiber paintings. Michalec’s previous works, stretched on canvas and resembling the traditional rectangular format of paintings, document candid domestic scenes framed through the lens of her smartphone camera. Trying to get all my birds to land in the yard is made up of shifting organic forms and allegorical, collaged compositions. With these new works, the artist examines the cultural and historical uses of avian symbolism to articulate womanhood, domestic life, and freedom.
An installation view of Mychaelyn Michalec’s exhibition Trying to get all my birds to land in the yard at K Contemporary. Image by Maggie Sava.
At the exhibition’s core are both literal and figurative reflections that Michalec tackles throughout her art practice. Trying to get all my birds to land in the yard explores desire, perceptions of the female body as it ages, what it means to be a woman, artist, and mother, and, as Michalec emphasizes in the exhibition text, the shortcomings of second-wave feminism in addressing these experiences. Michalec’s textiles are highly contextual, multi-faceted, whimsical, and introspective, asking a question that has no singular or simple answer: how are women viewed both as art and as artists? [1]
Mychaelyn Michalec, I know people who quail at the sight, 2024, hand and machine tufted wool yarn on cloth with knitted embellishments and quail feathers with felt backing, 65 x 51 inches. Image courtesy of Mychaelyn Michalec and K Contemporary.
Michalec's body of work demonstrates that, like many preceding artists dealing with feminist themes, she does not shy away from making the personal and private realm her subject. [2] Trying to get all my birds to land in the yard is no exception. The gallery is filled with self-portraits that Michalec combines and morphs with art historical references in order to create, as she describes, new narratives. [3]
In other words, she literally weaves herself as a subject into each fiber painting—the term she employs to describe how she uses a commercial rug tufting gun much like a paintbrush—leaving evident strokes that create movement and dynamism throughout the textiles. And how could these questions of individual and social perceptions and expectations of women not be profoundly personal?
Mychaelyn Michalec, Some people quail at the sight, 2024, hand and machine tufted wool on felt back cloth with knitted elements, quail feathers, wings, and feet, 63 x 27 inches. Image by Maggie Sava.
Some people quail at the sight (2024), a play on the words “some people quake at the sight,” exposes the vulnerability that Michalec brings to each of her textiles. Depicting herself looking in what appears to be a mirror, Michalec creates a fractured, middle-aged self-portrait in which her image refuses to become unified or reconciled. Is this woman seeing a divided reflection of herself or is she actually splitting into two?
A detail view of the quail feathers and feet in Mychaelyn Michalec’s Some people quail at the sight. Image by Maggie Sava.
Perched quails at the top right and bottom left of the knitted oval frame might allude to the Greek tale of Asteria’s transformation into a quail as she sought to escape Zeus’s advances, suggesting the desire to exist beyond the pervasive judgment and sexualization of women’s bodies. Ironically, Michalec sourced the quail feathers in this piece from an online seller who raises domestic birds to train hunting dogs. [4]
Mychaelyn Michalec, Lamentation of Swans, 2023, hand and machine tufted wool yarn on felt-backed cloth, 120 x 55 inches. Image courtesy of Mychaelyn Michalec and K Contemporary.
Michalec’s large scale Lamentation of Swans (2023) similarly stands as a reminder that the relationship between women and birds from antiquity until modern day is not just one of outdated, patriarchal metaphors, myth, or poetic imagery—it is also one of violence.
Michalec based Lamentation of Swans on an etching of the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan. [5] The work is undeniably uncomfortable—the composition references classical representations of Zeus’s assault of Leda, while adding detail to the visceral facial expression on the woman’s (Michalec’s) face. Two swans sit above her with their mirrored heads creating something close to a heart shape, which brings to mind the disturbing connotation of “love birds.” The unease that the works creates is made all the stronger when reflecting on how common representations of violence against women’s bodies are throughout art history.
Mychaelyn Michalec, Harpy, 2024, hand and machine tufted wool on felt-backed cloth, 44 x 32.5 inches. Image courtesy of Mychaelyn Michalec and K Contemporary.
Birds are not solely symbols or fellow characters in the fiber paintings. They also become a physical part of Michalec’s body in her portraits as she explores how mythologies portray the fusion of women and birds as monsters. As the name implies, Harpy (2024) represents such a creature. In it, Michalec appears to be both morphing into and consuming a swan that rests on her bare torso. The bird’s head sits in her mouth, and her neck is replaced with the bird’s neck. One unnaturally long arm emerges from the tailfeathers of the bird/her shoulder and reaches up to her cheek. The use of negative space further emphasizes her unusual proportions and her transformation into (or out of) the bird.
Mychaelyn Michalec, Harpy 2, 2024, hand and machine tufted wool on felt-backed cloth, 37 x 35 inches. Image courtesy of Mychaelyn Michalec and K Contemporary.
Mythological bird-woman hybrids—harpies, sirens, sphinxes—have traditionally been cast as villains for men partaking in epic journeys. As Michalec articulates, “I am really interested in these mythologies of women as monsters, and they are made into monsters because the characteristics that they are being punished for are the same characteristics we would reward a man for.” [6] Harpies in particular often play the role of voracious devourers.
Mychaelyn Michalec, Hypericum perforatum (I am the poison and the antidote), 2023, hand and machine tufted wool yarn on felt-backed cloth, 106 x 40 inches. Image courtesy of Mychaelyn Michalec and K Contemporary.
Knowing that Michalec employs art historical references throughout this show, I am reminded of another infamous portrayal of grotesque feasting: Saturn Devouring His Son by Francisco Goya. With similarly contorted limbs and a wide-eyed expression, Saturn eats the son prophesied to be his undoing. Perhaps Michalec is capturing an anxious self-consumption resulting from the tension between the choices she’s made for her career and their impact on her family—choices that women are often judged for while men are not.
A detail view of an eviscerated pigeon in Mychaelyn Michalec’s Hypericum perforatum (I am the poison and the antidote). Image courtesy of Mychaelyn Michalec and K Contemporary.
Conflict surrounding parenthood is a major theme in Michalec’s work. In fact, the only faces that appear in this show that are not the artist herself are those of her children. Her son appears in Hypericum perforatum (I am the poison and the antidote) (2023), Michalec’s homage to Ree Morton and her famous sculpture The Plant That Heals May Also Poison. As the exhibition text explains, Michalec and Morton’s lives and careers have followed similar trajectories; both women established their art careers later in life after starting families. Both also experienced seismic changes in their family lives when they shifted focus to their practice, which is part of Michalec’s critique of preceding feminist movements’ inability to deliver on the promise that women could find balance between family and career life. [7]
Mychaelyn Michalec, All my geese are swans, 2023, hand and machine-tufted wool yarn on cloth with knitted and crocheted elements, feathers, and vintage lace, 65 x 89 inches. Image courtesy of Mychaelyn Michalec and K Contemporary.
Trying to get all my birds to land in the yard is an exhibition that needs time to be digested. It is conceptually critical, aesthetically colorful, and challenging. The longer I sat with the show, the more I came to reflect on the very opening, contextualizing quote by Friedrich Nietzsche:
“Men have hitherto treated women like birds which have strayed down to them from the heights; as something more delicate, more fragile, more savage, stranger, sweeter, soulful—but as something which has to be caged up so that it shall not fly away." [8]
Mychaelyn Michalec, All my geese are swans 2, 2024, hand and machine-tufted wool on felt-backed cloth with vintage lace and knitted elements, 94 x 49 inches. Image courtesy of Mychaelyn Michalec and K Contemporary.
Thematically, it seems like an obvious choice and a fitting description. And yet, I can’t help but wonder, why use a male philosopher immortalized in the philosophical canon whose views on women seem complicated and mutable, to say the least? Is it another ironic layer within the show’s referential scaffolding? Doesn’t the use of “hitherto” in this context imply a disruption or interruption in this conflation of women with characteristics like “fragile” and “savage”—one which Michalec clearly argues has not yet occurred? Or is it suggesting a perpetually hopeful view that change might lie in the not-too-distant future?
A detail view of Mychaelyn Michalec, I know people who quail at the sight. Image courtesy of Mychaelyn Michalec and K Contemporary.
As Michalec’s fiber paintings suggest, there is still much work to be done in order for women to have the freedom and power that second wave feminism seemed to promise. It is also essential to consider that subsequent waves of feminism are not just picking up where feminist movement of the 1960s and 1970s left off. They are actively reckoning with its lack of consideration of the unique concerns of BIPOC women and members of the LGBTQIA+ community who were not given those same liberatory promises, and are building towards more intersectional, equitable futures.
An installation view of Mychaelyn Michalec’s exhibition Trying to get all my birds to land in the yard at K Contemporary. Image by Maggie Sava.
The answers to these questions remain unclear, and Trying to get all my birds to land in the yard is certainly not about offering neatly-wrapped resolutions. Instead, in the midst of open-endedness, Michalec invites us to find our own evolving meaning in kinship with the harpies, sirens, quails, and geese.
Maggie Sava (she/her) is a writer based in Denver, Colorado. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Art History and English, Creative Writing from the University of Denver and a master’s degree in Contemporary Art Theory from Goldsmiths, University of London.
[1] From my conversation with the artist, April 16, 2024.
[2] Jo Spence is just one example of an artist using self-portraiture to challenge views of the women’s bodies, particularly to capture her experience with breast cancer. For more information, see “Jo Spence,” Tate Modern, accessed April 18, 2024, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/jo-spence-18272#:~:text=Jo%20Spence%20(15%20June%201934,family%20portraits%2C%20and%20wedding%20photos..
[3] From my conversation with the artist, April 16, 2024.
[4] Ibid.
[5] In my conversation with the artist on April 16, 2024, she shared that part of her process involved searching for birds in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s online catalog. To see etchings of Leda and the Swan from the collection, visit https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search?q=leda+and+the+swan&material=Etching.
[6] From my conversation with the artist, April 16, 2024.
[7] It is not just the aesthetic, conceptual, and autobiographical connection that Michalec forges with Morton that situates her within an art historical network. She references the tradition of women using textile art as means of storytelling across cultures and throughout history and, similar to the ongoing effort among feminist art movements, she actively seeks to place a medium and material traditionally undermined as “craft” on the same level as “fine art.” Although Michalec has more of an eye on the repeating symbolism of birds throughout history than other textile artists in feminist art movements in this show, I cannot help but think of the work of Faith Ringold who similarly viewed her quilts as narrative paintings. See “Faith Ringold Quilts. A Century of Quilts: America in Cloth,” PBS, accessed April 18, 2024, https://www.pbs.org/americaquilts/century/stories/faith_ringgold.html.
[8] From the exhibition text.
