XOXOX (All Day)

Ellen Lesperance’s excruciatingly detailed gouache paintings often appear abstract but are in fact based on patterns that she sources from knit garments worn at women-led protests. This ten-color print with chine collé was inspired by a sweater worn by an activist at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp—an anti-nuclear weapons encampment in Berkshire, England, from 1981 to 2000. Using an archival black and white photograph, Lesperance zoomed in on the XOXO motif and reasserted it as the basis for the bodily form in this composition. A suggestion of legs and a lower torso fill the frame, with a complex layering of patterns in the pelvic area. Lesperance produced this work during a residency at the Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, NM with master printer Valpuri Remling, using transparent inks to allow elements from multiple layers of ink to subtly emerge.