What hides behind the soft folds of fabric? What private drama is simmering in the delicate warmth? What lives between the intimacy of remembered experience and the theatricality of the show curtain?

You are cordially invited to Window Dressing XXXIV: Soft, an intimate installation by Amy Bench, Veronica Ceci and Lisa Laratta on April 5, 2024 at ICOSA.

Soft explores the convergence of personal narratives and the elusive clues of nature– patterns, geometries, and mysterious symbols that shape and guide us– and the thrill behind anticipation of discreet pleasures and secrets. Can there be a place, an experience, a moment in time where all of our own particular and enigmatic maps and legends intersect to reveal something fleeting yet intimate? Something expansive yet miniscule? Soft is looking for that revelation through the peephole in the window.

The work in Soft is the first phase of the group’s upcoming collaborative installation, Soft Pocket, which opens inside ICOSA gallery on April 12th.

Bios:

Amy Bench
Filmmaker and cinematographer Amy Bench is drawn to telling stories of community and resilience, working across documentary, fiction, and animation. Last year at ICOSA, she co-curated the show Dream States, featuring animation artists from Canada to Portugal to Hong Kong and Japan, immersing the viewer in the transformative powers of the animated form. In 2021 she collaborated with Leon Alesi, Lisa Laratta, and Curtis Heath on the ICOSA show Nothing Is.

Amy’s documentary short film Breaking Silence (2023), co-directed with Annie Silverstein, won the Jury Award and Audience Award at SXSW, and Best Short Doc at Atlanta Film Festival. The film won the My Justice Film Award at DOC NYC and is available on PBS. Amy’s previous film, animated doc short More Than I Want to Remember (2022) won an NAACP Image Award and was shortlisted for a 2023 Oscar. The film won Best Short Doc at Hot Docs, Best Animated Short at Tribeca, and is distributed by MTV Documentary Films and available on Paramount+. Cinematography collaborations include Every Body (2023, NBC/Focus Features), Holy Hell (2016, CNN Films), and Mama Bears (2022, Independent Lens), and the 2019 Emmy Award Winning Outstanding Documentary Short, Trans in America: Texas Strong.

www.amybench.com

Veronica Ceci

Veronica Ceci is a Queer intermedia artist based in Austin, TX. They are known for portraiture, public artworks focusing on forgotten histories and immersive installation works. The artist makes undervalued labor conspicuous through intense materiality, repetition, iconography and lived performance. Ceci’s pieces have been in exhibitions at prestigious institutions such as the Cleveland Museum of Art and are held in many collections including the Library of Congress.

www.veronicaceci.com

Lisa Laratta
Lisa Laratta received her B.F.A. in Toronto, Ontario and her M.F.A. in Theatrical Design from The University of Texas at Austin and has been in Austin ever since. Lisa creates vast, detailed worlds for stage and screen using architecture, furniture, fabric, string, found objects and paint. Lisa is a founder and co-artistic director of paper chairs. Some of the theatre projects she has designed for include Plano, Poor Herman and Baal (paper chairs), Antigonick, Bright Mother and Decapitations (Salvage Vanguard Theatre), Sonnets For An Old Century and UTNT (University of Texas) and Heroic Dose and Stop Hitting Yourself (Rude Mechs), This past year she has designed for 2 shows on Off Broadway: Montag at SoHo Rep and Wolf Play at MCC. In January, The Girl That Became Legend that Lisa designed for Zach Scott Theatre was presented at the Kennedy Center. In February 2021 Lisa was featured as the Window Display artist at ICOSA for the show Nothing Is. She also has been Production Designer on films including jumping off bridges and Lover, Beloved. Lisa teaches set design at the University of Texas.

www.lisalaratta.com

This project is supported in part by the City of Austin Economic Development Department.