May 22–25, 2025
New York-based visual artist Elaine Reichek (b. 1943) is renowned for her innovative use of embroidery to explore intersections between text, image, and cultural identity. Her practice, which often involves both hand and digital embroidery, delves into themes such as the art/craft divide, gender roles, and the reinterpretation of historical narratives. Reichek's work frequently references literary and historical texts, transforming them into visual art that challenges traditional perceptions of authorship and originality. By employing embroidery—a medium traditionally associated with domesticity and femininity—she reclaims and recontextualizes it within the realm of contemporary art.
In her embroidered pieces inspired by the works of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, Reichek embodies the poet's voice through meticulously stitched text, capturing the emotional depth and resilience found in Akhmatova's poetry. These works serve as a dialogue between two artists across time, with Reichek translating the lyrical quality of Akhmatova's writing into a visual medium. The act of embroidery becomes a form of homage and interpretation, allowing Reichek to explore themes of memory, loss, and the enduring power of the written word. Through this fusion of literature and textile reimagining, Reichek not only honors Akhmatova's legacy but also expands the possibilities of narrative expression in visual art.
By stitching these texts, she not only preserves their essence but also disrupts traditional hierarchies of art and craft, turning what is often seen as "women's work" into a powerful medium for intellectual and artistic discourse. Her embroidered texts become artifacts that engage with history while also asserting a contemporary voice, bridging the gap between past and present through a tactile, labor-intensive practice.
Elaine Reichek lives and works in New York. She received a BA from Brooklyn College and a BFA from Yale University and has exhibited extensively since the mid-1970s in the United States and abroad. She has had solo exhibitions at Secession, Vienna; the Jewish Museum, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels; the Tel Aviv Museum; the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio; Stichting De Appel, Amsterdam; and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. Her work is in the collections of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, Jewish Museum, Museum of Arts and Design, and Brooklyn Museum; Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts and Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum; the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, Philadelphia; the Norton Museum of Art, Palm Beach, Florida; the Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas; the Irish Museum of Modern Art; the Dallas Museum of Art; and The Menil Collection, Houston, among others.
Reichek’s work was included in Art_Textiles at the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester, UK, in 2015; Art/Histories at the Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, in 2014; the 2012 São Paulo Biennial in Brazil; the 2012 Whitney Biennial; and the Cheongju International Craft Biennale 2011 in Korea. Reichek's work was included in Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the 2022 exhibition Women's Work at the Lyndhurst Mansion, Tarrytown, NY., and Joan Didion: What She Means, curated by Hilton Als, at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA, and the Perez Museum, Miami, FL. Reichek has recently exhibited with Richard Saltoun Gallery, London, UK; Marinaro Gallery, New York, and Shoshana Wayne Gallery, Los Angeles, CA.
