MILLICENT KENNEDY STUDIOS

Works by Lauren Iacoponi and Millicent Kennedy 

 

We are all vulnerable, moments pass and violence can be done quickly and what we are left with is the evidence of broken things resulting from that violence. Kennedy’s stitched work in the past has been interested in how these moments are allowed to not be cleaned away, but remembered, sewn into their shrouds, they are acknowledged and held. The deep desire of making fragile things solid, and holding space for chaos to be reconstructed as peace are central to their work.

 

Their most recent series focuses on the symbolism of architecture as power. Window bars and security fences are sewn into printed fabric. In later works from the series, the window bars are removed and reimagined as soft sculptures made from natural-dyed fabric. The work becomes tender, soft, and unthreatening. Similarly, as we acknowledge that the trappings of protecting property do not protect people, their power falls away, and softness becomes a strength for connecting our experiences.

 

Iacoponi explores how physical forms—plaster-coated chandeliers, monochromatic textile sculptures, wax-cast objects—can hold beauty and grief. Through the lens of Gothic literature, particularly Great Expectations, Iacoponi connects to decaying interiors and haunted domesticity. Miss Havisham’s rotting wedding cake, left untouched in a sealed-off room, becomes a metaphor for arrested development and self-imposed exile. Once a symbol of union, the cake becomes a grotesque relic, preserved in dust and cobwebs. It is not a story of love and loss but of ritual curdled into isolation.

 

In speaking with Kennedy to prepare for the exhibition, Iacoponi became interested in Gothic literature and its obsession with interiors—closed rooms, decaying homes, and haunted objects that speak when their owners cannot. Inspired by Victorian narratives where class difference, wealth, and material excess isolate rather than unify, Iacoponi began exploring spaces where domestic objects become symbols of power, repression, and self-imposed exile. In this work, fragility becomes form. Debris is not swept away but settled into. The chandelier, an object that demands space, is suspended, luminous, and structurally delicate—encapsulates an ongoing yearning for stability, presence, and home.

 

Like the cake, the chandelier rendered in white may suggest purity and celebration—but in Iacoponi’s installation, these forms are ghostly, sealed, and untouchable. Draped in plaster or wax, they become monuments to what has been withheld or silenced. They speak to class, confinement, and the emotional weight of traditional domestic roles.