Ki Smith Gallery, located in Manhattan’s East Village, today announces the opening of American artist Alana Dee Haynes’ solo exhibition, Thread or Thread, which holds residence from May 14 through June 20. 

Presented as abstracted stories on recognizable symbols with historic undertones, the exhibition’s highlights include 19" x 13" works that showcase complex patterns overlaid on photo print and paper. The artist uses ink and watercolor, with a meditative process of repetitive mark-making over the forms of found objects and images. The most predominant and recurring motifs are knots, which simultaneously symbolize security and tension. The show, aptly titled Thread or Thread, is indicative of the knots and the fact that the illustrations are threaded through the figures. 

Artist Alana Dee Haynes said: “I’m inspired by nature and similarities in shapes, how things form and fit together on a cellular level. People, faces, and bodies, and the way they are connected to nature are important themes in my work. Humans often try to remove themselves from nature by showing faces and bodies in a non-natural way. When I look at an image, a lot of the time my work feels intuitively inside. Drawing on images is an easy way to show how things are connected. By bringing it to the surface, it is my way of acknowledging how we are part of nature.”

Curated in the format of a junk yard sale, Thread or Thread is bastardizing the old masters by breaking down iconic Greek and Roman statues. The work, which indirectly represents the artist’s relationship with religion, presents an appreciation and an alternative perspective to religious objects. By growing up without a strong connection to religion, Haynes learned these objects with no preconceptions and created her own stories about them.  

Haynes continued, “I’m excited to share my solo show with New York. This work is the culmination of the entire pandemic. I’ve felt a return to my early work by drawing on paper and retreating into myself due to the absence of communal feedback. We’ve all been disconnected for so long that I want people viewing my show to be affected visually, and feel like they’re in on my experience. If the viewer finds a connection through my work, then it merely adds to the emotional and meditative narrative layered into the pieces.”