Non-Linear Lineages at Mini Mart City Park
Naomi Kasumi, MEM: memory • memorial no. 7. Encaustic cards which contain Japanese sutra calligraphy, digital images, Xerox images, personal hand-writing, maple leaves, plants, and butterfly wings, bamboo, cotton string.
Detail of MEM: memory • memorial no. 7.
It is purely by chance I am writing about family lineages and mentioning the Behnke Gallery in back to back posts. Examinations of interpersonal relationships and family lineages through material create an entirely different scene in comparison to my last encounter with the subject (at Erin Elyse Burns’ Sabbatical exhibition) in this two-person exhibition of Naomi Kasumi and Rachel Dorsey. Brought together by Alissa Dymally Williams at Mini Mart City Park, Mutable Memory is a raw and meticulous representation of grappling with the cycles of life.
These glowing, membrane-like tapestries suspended at the back of the gallery drew me in immediately from where I entered. Williams tells me she encountered them on view at the Behnke Gallery in a group show and just had to show them. I found a reference online as well of these works on view at Woman Made Gallery in Chicago. There are actually nine panels that comprise this work, and it has previously been shown completely shrouded in darkness, the individually lit panels created the light in the room like a womb or a cave lit up by flame. I learn that this is a letter to Kasumi’s unborn child, stories she would have told her of the moon and butterflies, leaves and gods. From its delicate details and sentimentality to its life-size scale, it bore the most presence in the room. Kasumi shares with Mini Mart, "Through installation and book art, I found a way to transform concealed emotions into public expression—sharing truth as a form of catharsis." The repetition within the work can be physically seen in each of the works on view. They exhibit the ways in which tending to emotions is cyclical, metaphorically and physically employing the act of mending.
Besides the repetition, the light which passes through this piece MEM: memory • memorial no. 7 defined the mood in which I received all of the works. The act of passing was consistent in the show: passing through, down, by, around, away, etc. The presence of this first work I fixated on is quite uplifted in this corner of the gallery, flooded with natural light and surrounded by warm wood accents. It is the perfect counter to the opposite corner where a grounded, heavy and darker drawing by Rachel Dorsey is pinned up.
Rachel Dorsey, Lessons in Physics (Newton's Cradle - for my grandfather), 2025. Charcoal, conte crayon, walnut ink, turmeric ink, acrylic ink, extra heavy molding paste, upholstery thread, linen, wool scraps, other found fabric, butterfly clips.
This work embraces a clumsiness I imagine is a result of moving loose material over loose fabric, letting washes bleed and soak with little controllability. Dark outlines of feet and hands materialize out of the other non-descript lumps. This piecemeal and asymmetrical quilt blends and embeds with the surface of the drawing. Its weight is emphasized by the taught threads holding it up. Williams tells me the substrate of the drawing, these fabricated quilts, were passed through the artist’s family onto her; a family of factory workers and caretakers.
Rachel Dorsey, Shift Change. Charcoal, conte crayon, natural dyes (black bean, madder, black tea, rosemary, indigo), walnut ink, turmeric ink, acrylic ink, oil stick, extra heavy molding paste, fabric scraps (hand-me-down table linens), wool scraps, darning thread, drop cloth patches.
The works are not elegant; gritty and feverous marks loosely reveal images competing with an already determined color palette of the fabrics. One of the works, Receiving Line, has a rather clunky plaid skirt adorning its bottom border. Sometime I find the fabric and the drawing/painting happening atop it are a bit at odd with one another. Yet, they do capture a ruggedness and sought-after comfort I find compelling in the context of the origins of the fabrics. Williams compares a neighboring drawing by Dorsey, Shift Change, to The Potato Eaters by Vincent Van Gogh. The figures gather and bunch and hold each other up, sharing space on an object characterized by its ability to share comfort and warmth.
Between these two large works by Dorsey are some curious little objects by Kasumi that I am invited to prod at with white gloves presented to me by Williams. We talk about the detail-oriented process of book making and how Kasumi creates complex and poetic experiences of text. Truthfully, I don’t try to read them. I let the folded in secrets remain what the are. I reveal the phrase “to be protected…” and encounter a thread running through the centers of the folds of the long script contained within the small box, literally creating a through-line. Still, the folding of the paper breaks the linearity in which we both read text and experience time. I contemplated heavily on the idea of ‘folding’ and found myself later researching— well, rather I was spiraling down a rabbit hole— on the Fold Theory, if folds exist in time, quantum mechanics, and the puzzlement of consciousness. Ironically, I went down that hole before knowing the title of an aforementioned work by Dorsey, Lessons in Physics (Newton's Cradle - for my grandfather). After a dizzying experience of trying to understand if folds actually exist in time I eventually came across an a statement in an article that stuck with me, “our consciousness, being an information structure, processes the information that we absorb from our bodies and our environment.”
Partial view of Naomi Kasumi, Secret Collection #6 Forma Magiche, 2013.Mixed media (Japanese washi paper, wood, colored thread, Bamboo stick, ink, invisible ink, fire).
Partial view of Naomi Kasumi, Secret Collection #6 Forma Magiche, 2013.Mixed media (Japanese washi paper, wood, colored thread, Bamboo stick, ink, invisible ink, fire).
I find these works in this cohesive curation of meticulous items reflecting the sentiment of that definition of consciousness. These artists provide a grounded view of transcendence, connecting familiar material and matter to their own family history and stories, of loved ones passed away or only imagined. Dorsey tells Mini Mart, "Throughout the process, I felt like the editor of an anthology, pulling together a tapestry of short stories responding to a question: how, in big and small ways, do we care for one another?"
These works are sentimental and vast. Amongst the artworks is a book by Kasumi that resembles a Lotus flower and is written in memory of her late father. It is the only object in the show that has a pristineness and bright green and pink color palette that sets it apart from the otherwise weathered works.
Rachel Dorsey, Gather/come as you are, 2024. Charcoal, conte crayon, and molding paste on canvas stretched over custom wood support structure. Wood fabrication by James William Blake.
The wonky large-scale works by dorsey and the finely crafted memory collections by Kasumi make me think about all the items I carry and live with that possess the same sentimentality. What do we do with it all? How do we compartmentalize the feelings and set them free? In the midst of this line of questions, I keep coming back to the act of passing, how energy transfers. And yes, I am thinking about Newton’s Law again —besides that, there is also the energy possessed in the objects passed through generations, unbound by the laws of physics. The show itself does successfully “challenge the way [I] call on memory and stow away sentimentality,” as stated by Curator Williams.
I look forward to seeing what’s next for these artists as they continue to hone their use of materials and find the infinite nuance to behold in storytelling. There is much more to discover in the practice of accessing material and using its potential energy to transform it into something quite visceral.
Here are more images taken by me upon visitation of the exhibition.
Mutable Memory, was on view at Mini Mart City Park from April 4 – 26, 2026.
Upcoming exhibitions from Mini Mart City Park can be found here.
