mary margaret groves

Fascia (fash-ee-ah) is the connective tissue that creates boundaries between muscle groups while at the same time binding them together, making it impossible to isolate any one muscle. It creates muscular systems in which one muscle movement ripples throughout the whole body. We act as a united system where tension in the feet affects the hips affects the shoulders affects the head and so on. Similarly, humans are individual organisms that create a system. Our separation is not in opposition to our togetherness - in fact our separateness allows us to function more fully as a system, much like our system of muscles. Thus, it is not only impossible to isolate anyone from the interconnectedness of all things, but in fact necessary for our success to embrace our social fascia as it exists. 

Western culture often views connection as something that is made, but I think it is more appropriate to view connection as something that is manifest. I have often found that attempting to accomplish connection actually gets in the way of allowing the connection that already exists to flow through our bodies. Thus, I have developed the phrase “The Myth of Intimacy,” which explains this phenomenon of connection as an action that has either succeeded or failed. Accomplishing connection implies certain expectations put on other people and when they do not perform, we are disappointed. My work in this show is a series of investigations around the concept of connections--both in healthy and unhealthy forms. To flesh out my ideas about these two ontologically different types of connection, I have been mining audio from many of my teary healing meditations and audio-journal epiphanies, as well as interviews that I have been conducting to explore other people’s relationship to connection.