Edie Fake

Entanglement, a woodblock print, merges Edie Fake's interest in queer spaces of potential and the aesthetics of ornament with a new subject of chromatic and compositional exploration: the board game.

A 14-color relief print, Entanglement was created from 8 hand-carved and laser-cut woodblocks, mounted to cloth-wrapped board. The square print takes the form of a colorful board game, with paths like a woven tapestry: its warps and wefts a series of twists, turns, and switchbacks. In a relational sense, the artist has long referenced the textile as a subject in his work, having likened a textile’s weave to one’s “lifeline through the warp of all other bodies.” Queer spaces have long been of interest to the artist, however more typically through the lens of architecture, and more recently, the logic of Tarot cards.

In 2021, critic Annie Howard pointed out that in Fake’s work, “abstract representations of community form and collapse, cohere and dissipate, reflective of the real experience within queer lives and their ever-shifting constellations.” The artist here is thinking of what play makes possible: the potential for openness and the acceptance of chance. The game board itself is really a catalyst of sorts, for an ecology of bodies, maybe a party, or a life enmeshed with others.

A recent painting, Mr. Snakes and Ladders, 2024, also takes the game as its subject, this one with global roots in India and an eventual western iteration called “Chutes and Ladders.” Other recent paintings by Fake reference perfume bottles or fabric patterns, and recall metaphysical maps and diagrams made by alchemists, spiritualists, and students of the occult.