Keeping Time with Needle and Thread

Since 2005, the artist has engaged a variety of media to convey messages of social awareness and activism, from her “Lush/Bleak” series of paintings that illustrated the calamity of the human impact on the landscape. Her 2009-2011 series “Where Ice Meets Sky,” referenced global warm via scenes of glaciers calving, which she witnessed during a trip to Iceland. Her 2011-2013 “Rainy Season” series, depicting rain on glass and pavement, was made after a sequence of debilitating hurricanes and winter super-storms hit her home/studio.

The work comprising “Keeping Time with Needle and Thread” consists of a series of six pieces, one of which is shown in the photo gallery below. In several of these pieces, “The Spinning Wheel” and “The Cherry Tree,” these she juxtaposes natural materials with complex mechanical and electrical systems to create surreal, seemingly effortless experiences, and blurring lines between the piece, the performance, the artist and viewer.

Perhaps the most persistent theme in Goncarova’s work is women’s struggle for equal recognition for their work. In her piece “The Bird Feeder,” the artist sat in an egg suspended in a tree for 34 days with birdseed in her hands. The piece speaks about the societal expectation for a woman to be “endlessly giving and selfless, even when it means her own detriment.” During the performance, the artist sat in rain and cold temperatures, which “made the piece even more difficult [to perform], but even more poignant.”