Solo Exhibition | ’Blown to Bows’ Visit Gallery, Newburgh NY October 2024
fused plastic, Installation
This body of work represents the culmination of a seven-year exploration into the boundaries—both literal and conceptual—that shape how we navigate the built environment. In this exhibition, Ahern reimagine materials like boundary tape and garbage bags—items typically used to delineate, control, and discard. By custom-fabricating boundary tape with the word SOFTEN repeated infinitely and manipulating caution and danger tapes through melting, cutting, and respelling, she subverts their usual messaging. What once conveyed strict warnings now invites softness and contemplation. These works, seemingly liberated from their original intent, appear to move and circulate like wind-caught fragments, embodying a dance of transformation and appeal. Ahern’s art invites viewers to reconsider the mundane. By reclaiming objects that are often overlooked or dismissed, she reveals the quiet power they hold over our daily perceptions. Her playful yet poignant manipulations offer "loopholes" in the rigid frameworks that surround us—moments of connection, empathy, and reflection in spaces we might otherwise take for granted.
