This report examines the contributions of Cheryl Riley and Pat Lay to HOME HERE, an installation at New Jersey City University featuring 11 women artists thriving in the Hudson County area. The show has been Curated by alumna Lucy Rovetto to explore themes of history and memory that purposefully blur societal boundaries. While focusing on Riley and Lay, I consider how their pieces engage in the installation in a continuous flow to create layered dialogues about collective memory.
Cheryl Riley recalls memories through the “Appropriation Bag 1 – Plight of the Black Woman” (2006). She uses a humble brown paper bag coated in gold foil to sharply critique the values embedded in “high art” culture. By doing so, she transforms an inexpensive, everyday object into a charged symbol of visibility, and ownership. The work plays on the dual meaning of appropriation-both the unauthorized use of cultural material and the act of acquiring something through purchase. By pairing materiality with imagery, the exterior displays artworks by Black artists as a public-facing emblem for identity and empowerment, while the interior conceals images depicting white subjects, suggesting how cultural representation are often redistributed for the benefit of dominant audiences. This inversion is both ironic and confrontational, positioning Black subjects as a branded, visible surface while exposing the hidden restraints that shape whose narratives are protected. In doing so, the piece confronts societal barriers faced by women of color and reframes the bag as a metaphor that contains memory.
“Pat Lay’s Transcendent Landscape #7” exposes memory beyond what is internalized. Her piece is composed of fired clay, glaze, and embedded computer parts, constructing a reflective terrain where memory and the human condition intersect with technological presence. Through a gridded visual structure, Lay presents a landscape that feels internally generated yet deliberately unsettled, prompting viewers to question what remains organic in contrast to the mechanical. The fusion of handcrafted ceramics with digital components underscores the growing influence of technology on perception and experience, suggesting how personal memory is increasingly mediated. Read as a metaphor, the work points to the way individuals live through and alongside technological systems, blurring the boundary between private identity and shared, collective consciousness.
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