S. Mason - Of Plural Worlds: Archive

OF PLURAL WORLDS: ARCHIVE

Of Plural Worlds: Archive

Ugly Art Co. in Memphis, TN

January 10 - January 31, 2026

Closing reception Saturday Jan 31, 6 - 9p

Exhibition Statement

I am embarrassed to admit it, but I am needed help with language to describe why I chose a natural history museum as my extended analogy for this series. Brigid Rau explains in her own artist statement, “When natural history dioramas were constructed, did the designers ever have an entirely enrapt public experiencing an instant of nature? Or has it always been as it seems to be now… that dioramas absorb museum-goers much more so in their earnest and unsettling attempts at passing off a constructed, still moment as an accessible and fantastic one?”1

I have always meant the pieces in my show as constructed things, hence the natural history exhibit context and sculpture exhibition. I was also perhaps the diorama designers’ enrapt audience naively accepting the illusion for an embarrassingly long time. Only by pushing the analogies to my experiences as far as they can possibly stretch, and by making them in fabric, do I see the dioramas as “unsetting attempts to pass off a constructed, still moment.” And only in writing this do I realize how much about lineage I’m still sheepishly hiding in the archive’s buttoned up, reverent tone.

It’s the commonplace, recognizable materials make the sculptures at all approachable. Some of the materials in Of Plural Worlds had already lived one life when they came to me. I thrift shop, swap, and I use gifts of fabric from friends and family reluctantly (because they were intended for much prettier applications. I am sorry, and thank you!).

The story attached to each material makes it better because I’m usually thinking about cultural values past down while I work. The respectability politics passed to me balk when I plan to marry unusual materials to each other. But I remind myself that I am also grafting in new strategies for being, something universal even in insular communities. Maybe I was the audience, but now I’m the diorama maker in my unsettling attempt to hold still an accessible and fantastic moment behind plexiglass and resin.

Sophia Mason

December 20, 2025

1 Brigid Rau, artist statement circa 2014.