Deep, Deep Woods
Vinyl cutouts on painted wall, jump ropes, framed textile pieces, colored pencil, embroidery and jump ropes on mat board, frames, poly cotton red and white stripe fabric, black cotton fabric, stuffing, wooden roof, plastic picket fence, fabric pieces, found children’s mittens and gloves, Raggedy Ann/Andy doll patterns cover in latex and testosterone gel, wallpaper, vinyl siding, window frames, plexiglass, side table, raggedy Ann and Andy lamps.
Greer Lankton’s (red frames) drawings, collages and mixed media pieces from childhood, adolescence and adulthood, Catalina Schliebener Muñoz’s (pink frames) teenage drawings and collage from 1996-1999, archival objects from Greer Lankton Archive, personal ephemera of Catalina Schliebener Muñoz.
Variable Dimensions
Site specific installation at Mattress Factory, curated by Monique Long, Pittsburgh PA
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March 9, 2024-March 30, 2025
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Born out of the artist’s research into the life and artworks of Greer Lankton– a trans femme artist whose works are archived at Mattress Factory– their solo exhibition Deep, Deep Woods invites audiences to consider the complex histories and ongoing realities of LGBTIQA+ artists and communities. Blurring the lines between reality and fiction, seriousness and play, Schliebener Muñoz interweaves their personal history with Greer Lankton’s archives and iconic American characters. Their full-room installation incorporates the characters of Raggedy Ann and Andy, and subtly evokes Alice through the Looking Glass and The Wizard of Oz to create a fantasy space filled with multilayered collages, oversized doll parts, large-scale murals, pieces of Lankton’s archive, and their own teenage drawings. More than an homage to Lankton, Deep, Deep Woods is a dialogue between two artists across time and space, and is an exploration of shared experiences of the trans body; questions of self-identity; and the power of imagination to make new worlds.
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The idea for the exhibition Deep, Deep Woods was born out of the initial encounter with the Greer Lankton Archive during a visit to Mattress Factory in 2022. Queer artist and educator Catalina Schliebener Muñoz (they/them) was struck by some of the uncanny similarities between Lankton’s artistic motifs and their own.
Greer Lankton (1958-1996) was a prominent artist during the height of the avant garde art scene in downtown New York in the 1980s and early 90s. As a transgender woman, Lankton centered her work on queerness vis a vis the body by creating portraits across mediums including the handmade dolls that she became known for. Eventually, she received critical acclaim; her work was included in both the Whitney Biennial and the Venice Biennale in 1995. The following year, the Mattress Factory mounted a solo exhibition of Lankton’s work titled It’s All About ME, Not You. The piece is a monumental, autobiographical installation, comprised of paintings and drawings, iconography, dolls, and ephemera. Framed in a house-like structure, the installation is a reproduction of her home and studio. Lankton died shortly after the opening in late 1996. The museum subsequently acquired Lankton’s archive along with the installation which remains on view.
Though Schliebener Muñoz has worked with similar materials long before they became aware of the Lankton Archives, the connections resonated with them and they conceptualized an exhibition that would stand as a visual dialogue between the two artists. While Lankton’s work focused on corporeality, Schliebener Muñoz interrogates the ways in which educational materials— books, toys, etc.— indoctrinate or teach children how to perceive gender, class, race, and other social constructs. By appropriating familiar characters from children’s books and films and deconstructing them in murals, collages, and other works, the artist creates a dissonance between the objects and the viewer’s relationship to the original stories. Both artists have maximalist approaches, however, in the exhibition, Schliebener Muñoz plays with scale in order to amplify iconic imagery from fairy tales that influenced both artists. The artist also chose childhood drawings from their own archive and placed them side-by-side with Lankton’s from a comparable age. These archival works serve to emphasize the art historical kinship between Lankton and Schliebener Muñoz.
– Text by Monique Long
