At Home and in the World

For At Home and in the World, her exhibition at the Palais de Beaux-Arts in Brussels, Elaine Reichek explores and innovates on the tradition of the sampler--a didactic tool used in learning embroidery that can often be a work of art in itself--by recasting works of visual art--including pieces by Georges Seurat, Andy Warhol, Lawrence Weiner, Jenny Holzer, and Barbara Krueger--as well as literary quotations--from Moby Dick, Ovid, Tennyson, Kierkegaard, Woolf and A.S. Byatt, among others--into the form of samplers. Working in a subversive postmodern tradition that includes both the artwork of Raymond Pettibon and the literary essays of Susan Howe, Reichek rereads high art through the prism of domestic craft, challenging the patriarchal and modernist assumptions that still permeate our culture. Uniquely and cleverly designed, this volume documents Reichek's work in full color.