My Dog Hates Liminal Space | Vida Beyer

My Dog Hates Liminal Space 

an exhibit by Vida Beyer

textile & embroidery

August 3 - 28

For a couple of years I have been referring to the more game, curious, open, and, at times, passive parts of myself as being a bit of a "dog in a car". If someone asks me if I want to go on a ride I will usually say yes I am always curious as to where people will take me and i like to ride.
Independence and self reliance are useful and I'm not a person without agency or someone who doesn't make my own moves, but i feel often like i exist primarily in relation and response to others, which has made the past year and a half, but also  the past several years, hard and strange.

I love dogs, I grew up around dogs and I have spent a few years of my life working with and for dogs. I think it's so beautiful that, like horses, they really teach people how to be.
I compare myself to a dog often, I compare others in my life to dogs too.
I think sometimes about how they just stand there or just start pacing when they don't know where or how to be, I both feel like this and also feel like I am an environment that creates this feeling. 
It can be hard to be disoriented and feel disconnected and beholden to forces that feel big and outside yourself.

Another resonant marble that has been rolling around in my mind is the character of Amy/Ames from Torrey Peters 2021 novel "Detransition, Baby" Amy/Ames refers to her relationship to her young, athletic body that does not feel like her own as like having a "good dog".

This body of work is about dogs and not about dogs. It's sort of of a mind map that seeks to express the connective tissue between gender, grief, relational selfhood, transformation and being undone by circumstance.
I make my art because sometimes I have to share my concerns, maybe other people have them too.
I hope that sharing is useful, all I can do is be honest.
I guess the dream is for someone to say "yes, that's what I've been trying to say too!" And I don't know if that will happen but all I can do is concoct my little offerings and put them in space to see.