Hannah Cwiek is one of the inaugral artists selected as part of Centrum’s new Emerging Artist Residency Program.

Along with the other awardees, Cwiek is in-residence at Fort Worden in October 2014, exploring a search for identity and place-whether challenging gender status, understanding issues of personal identity specific to culture or religious values, or challenging traditional power structures.

Cwiek is influenced by the struggle in challenging power, as well as the impending feelings of utility and exhaustion that keep us stuck in a place that we may not desire to be in.

Recent Exhibitions

• TO NO AVAIL. (solo show), Vermillion Art Gallery, Seattle, WA
• (RE) Turning (co-show), Lucia Douglas Gallery, Bellingham, WA
• Fast Forward: Rite of Passage, Western Gallery, Bellingham, WA
• Beyond Borders, Viking Union Gallery, Bellingham, WA
• Labyrinth: Communities (Un)bound, Viking Union Gallery, Bellingham, WA
• Vanity, B Gallery, Bellingham, WA
• When It’s ________, It’s Finished, B Gallery, Bellingham, WA
• Bloodlines, B Gallery, Bellingham, WA
• Cincture (co-show), B Gallery, Bellingham, WA

My work has been greatly inspired by the futility and vulnerability experienced from constructs placed on sex and gender. Movement is often incorporated into my work, but always as one that goes nowhere but in a circle. I have explored this issue and the feelings that surround it through various metaphors- trained racing dogs, shrouded figures, and the use of mediums that stiffen up and set for good, such as plaster and concrete.

Cwiek’s art explores the connections between vulnerability, obedience, and conditioning, and how these concepts structure thought and reasoning. Racing dogs with little ability to function outside of running in circles often act as metaphors for human limitation and lack of awareness, while shrouds of stiff materials refer to the vulnerability we have living within institutionalized ideas.

Issues that are cyclical and pervasive inform Cwiek’s work as they perpetually exist, yet are limited to one singular path.

The potential permanence that any way of thinking can have once it’s taught interests me, particularly in regards to sex and gender. I am influenced by the struggle in challenging power, as well as the impending feelings of futility and exhaustion that can keep us stuck in a place that we may not desire to be in.

Hannah Cwiek and her fellow Residents will exhibit work at Port Townsend’s Gallery Walk in November at The Cotton Building in downtown Port Townsend. The Gallery Walk occurs from 5:30 p.m. – 8 p.m. on Saturday, November 1, 2014.