public Opening Reception:

Wesnesday, October 17th, 5-7pm

About the exhibition:

“My heart is moved by all I cannot save. So much has been destroyed.” - Adrienne Rich, The Dream of a Common Language

Uta Fellechner is exhibiting a series of experimental photographic portraits that honor the brave survival and difficult, unsheltered life of my immigrant mother who lived with late stage dementia.  This is balanced by an evolving series of existential self-portraits which are experimental self-investigations, not selfies. There is also a group of photographs which celebrate political resistance.  Her sculptures on display focus on the expressive materials of pit-fired clay and carefully selected and juxtaposed found objects. There is an undercurrent of metaphors and otherness in much of my work, like “The Red Dream” -- an image of a fish with my mother’s face blended into its body –- setting out on a mysterious journey to an unknown destination. Uta looks to art for stark, spiritual truth – not decorative beauty.  The early self-portrait “The Medusa and I” holds a key to how she works.  The snake-headed Medusa from Greek mythology is a maligned feminist protector of life and an agent of change.  Sometimes Uta refers to her work as “meta-ethical images of survival.” The fragile beauty of life in all its human and non-human forms haunts her, but so does the human potential for corruption, injustice, and violence.  

Uta was a child refugee - born in an air raid, and she became a teenage immigrant – a wanderer in strange lands.  For Uta, the Nazi holocaust in the land of her birth and the terrors of America’s history loom large in her consciousness.

“To search for power within myself means I must be willing to move through being afraid to whatever lies beyond.” - Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider

About the Artist:

Uta Fellechner is an experimental photographer and sculptor who has lived in Philadelphia for over 30 years.  Her background includes working for the S.R. Guggenheim Museum and The Free Library of Philadelphia as well as teaching art history and 3D design at the University of the Arts and Montgomery County Community College.  She graduated with high honors from Mount Holyoke College, MA, and holds graduate degrees from Columbia University (Heft scholar) and Drexel University. Uta is also a refugee immigrant from World War II Germany. Uta has exhibited widely in juried and invitational shows, including the Morris Gallery of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; William Penn Museum, Harrisburg, PA; Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Springfield Art Museum, MA; Esperanza Peace and Justice Center, San Antonio, TX; Art in City Hall, Phila;  Moore College of Art, Phila; West Chester University, PA; Ursinus College, PA. She has participated in four solo and two-person shows at the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia; Hicks Art Center, Bucks County Community College, PA; Ziegfeld Art Gallery, Columbia University, NYC; Dwight Art Memorial, Mount Holyoke College, MA. Uta has initiated two cross-cultural projects with Native American activist poet-artist Chrystos and Chinese American artist-activist Lily Yeh.  She also organized and participated in two panel discussions of two national conferences of the Women’s Caucus for Art at Moore College of Art. She was on the Board of Directors for Philadelphia Tri-State Artists Equity and she is currently a member of Philadelphia Sculptors and the DaVinci Art Alliance.               

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