HALEY PRESTIFILIPPO: Primary Elements

Hayley Prestifilippo, Cut From The Same Cloth, 2014, graphite on paper, 7” x 5”. Hayley Prestifilippo, We Have Waited, 2015, graphite on paper, 22” x 30”

Graphite is an accessible and malleable tool that provides Haley Prestifilippo with a sense of freedom. A tiny stick of wood combined with a sliver of carbon that was once a tool used in grade school is magically transformed into a medium that can also make large, beautiful drawings. Contrasting textures, swirling movements, and spaces of detailed depth and erasure become more than just marks on the surface of paper; a lion, a tiger, rabbits and storks emerge, bound in a tightly wrapped fabric in the process of unraveling— or binding even tighter in a cottony orb that is also fragmenting their bodies—or may even be their bodies. The narrative isn’t clear, as Prestifilippo conflates visual information to explore symbiotic relationships using animals as placeholders for human experiences.

18 profile “Animals have their own way of being and have certain roles because they are a part of a specific group, a genus or species, for example,” Prestifilippo said. “I use animals to reference that there are different types of identities in which we also define ourselves. I’m curious how being a part of a specific group or system creates a sense of necessary belonging and often a sense of othering, that us-vs-them mentality where anyone who doesn’t define themselves as fitting within specific systems—nation, religion, politics, and gender—becomes an outsider to be mistrusted or attacked. I find animals to be a perfect conduit for exploring these themes.”

In small, poetic vanitases to larger scale pieces that are both beautiful and unsettling, Prestifilippo draws from art historical references, examining, for example, how animals in Baroque still life paintings show decadence and opulence; or the way Rachel Ruysch’s flower bouquets also include a few dead flowers or some rotted fruit as a subtle reminder of mortality. Prestifilippo is using the same sort of aesthetic sensibility to disrupt exquisite details with quiet but troubling visual cues that ultimately push back against the preciousness of the drawing and upend the visual narrative. For instance, in the large composition We Have Waited, the viewer senses that something is alive underneath a depiction of bound yet floating fabric, an anonymous reclining figure or “thing writhing in midair” that Prestifilippo suddenly captured in a monochromatic graphite snapshot instead of a photograph. Predator and prey are intertwined within the fabric folds, but their usual places are subverted, as lions become prey and storks become predator. Prestifilippo wanted to entangle these relationships in the same narrative to question their roles.

“When you really look at the drawing, you see that the stork is biting off one of [the] lions’ ears or chewing on an eye. It is ambiguous as to why this is happening to the lions; They cannot prevent it and they cannot escape these large, imposing birds that are generally not viewed as aggressive or violent; in western culture fables, they are viewed as bringing babies. How that relates to people and our relationships with each other is that we are all in this world together; half of us are

fighting and the other half is getting along. There needs to be a way to have a discourse without people feeling like—well, you’re a lion and I am a bird and we can’t interact. In the end, we are all just people.”

A similar relationship confusion occurs in We Can’t Stay. Small birds carry off disintegrating bits of a horse and a tiger, effervescent blood cells or pomegranate-like seed-selves being taken back to the nest to nurture other tiny birds. In a swirling mass of black graphite drapery that is also part horse and/or human hair, smaller animals burrow in the folds of erasure or are abruptly tousled in a suspended still-life moment, becoming or unbecoming in a fabricated situation where their usual set of rules and the systems they live within no longer make sense. If we imagine these animals as people, what Prestifilippo says about the systems and roles we place ourselves in becomes a simple reminder that “we are all just people,” and one day we, too, will die. Still, in a smaller vanitas, From the Same Cloth, predator and prey emerge as equals from a flowing fabric womb, delivering a softer, powdery heartbeat to the memento mori that Prestifilippo is signaling throughout her sometimes gritty graphite narratives.

The only piece in Prestifilippo’s current body of artwork that includes color is You Can’t Steal it if I Give it to You. Decorative tapestry unfurls between the split-halves of a carousel-like horse while a great-horned owl hooks part of the tapestry in its beak. Is the owl pushing the tapestry back into place to make the horse whole again, or is there an agreed upon violence in which both animals are participating? The title of the work is evocative enough; yet once again, the viewer must interpret the relational and social dichotomies.

LEFT: Hayley Prestifilippo, We Can’t Stay, 2016, graphite on paper, 50” x 36”. RIGHT: Hayley Prestifilippo, You Can’t Steal It If I Give it to You, 2016, graphite and gouache on Paper, 11” x 11”

Prestifilippo originally trained as an oil painter, but having to plan for where every element had to go in the painting felt too stifling. Using graphite provides the needed flexibility to experiment and play.

“Working this way allows me to layer meaning and imagery in a more complexed way. I am also fascinated with the fact that graphite is carbon; it is a diamond, the simplest form of life and a primary element. I love that I can just put it down on paper and pull it back up through erasure; it doesn’t have to remain on the page, as it does with paint. I draw the animals with great detail and then I go back in and erase to play with the positive and negative areas. It is a little painful because I usually have spent a long time working on the details, but the erasure gives a sense of the history of the piece and goes along with the memento mori, the metaphor for life and death themes. People can see that erasure has happened, as there is a ghost image through the rest of the work.”

When Prestifilippo was a Spotlight Artist in the 2016 Momentum exhibition, she did a detailed drawing that people could participate in “live-erasing.” “Art often has this sense of preciousness to it and I was curious how people would respond to the invitation to erase the drawing. Seeing the progress of the piece throughout the show evoked an immediate and uncomfortable experience of having to overcome their own social cues or rules. The tension between their fear of participating and the obvious violation of my artwork by putting the vulnerability of the drawing in their hands inverted their usual expectations. By the end of the exhibit opening, the drawing was completely gone.”

Upon continued examination of Prestifilippo’s artwork and talking with her, rich layers of meaning and social theory questions float in the background like fluid fabrics, shiny orbs, and mirror-like surfaces. Yet something remains hidden still, unfinished. Moving forward, Prestifilippo’s artworkdeserves more critical discourse.

For more information and images of Haley Prestifilippo’s work, visit haleyprestifilippo.com. n