Molly Morin
2 x 15
Needle-felted wool and iron dumbell, 2018
2 x 10
Needle-felted wool and steel hardware, 2018
Dressed
Commercial sweater, reclaimed yarn, 2026
Phase Glitch
Reclaimed yarn from commercial sweaters, 2026
Running
Reclaimed yarn from commercial sweaters, 2026
Welcome
Reclaimed yarn from commercial sweaters, brass hardware, 2026
Biography
Molly Morin is a sculptor, fiber artist and educator based in Western Massachusetts. Her object making practice considers and critiques technology-enabled systems that amplify and extend power imbalances already present in social, political and art-world contexts. Morin has given invited lectures at the Center for Research Computing at the University of Notre Dame, The Society for Science, Literature and the Arts, and the National Academy of Science. She has exhibited nationally and internationally including solo exhibitions at The Collaboratory at UC Santa Barbara, Wittenberg University, Lamar University, the University of Dallas, and the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art.
Artist statement
My object-making practice considers and critiques technology-enabled systems that amplify and extend power imbalances already present in social, political and art-world contexts. My work is inspired by my upbringing in rigid and high-achieving communities, shaped by coming of age in the advent of social media, and rooted in queer community and labor solidarity. I gather the things I have in abundance: the cast-offs of mass production, the methods of cybernetics, and the detritus of global racialized capitalism and re-assemble them to create works that are playful, critical, and beautiful. My work experiments with ways we might make what we want from what we already have.
My current body of work, Made en Mass is an introduction to a universe constructed from the discarded. The sculptures and tapestries in this collection are made from yarn reclaimed from piles of unwanted commercially-produced sweaters. I disassemble each manually, harvesting the yarn and working slowly, resisting the speed and commodification of labor endemic to this AI era. Each work is made on a hand-powered 1980s’s era semi-industrial knitting machine in my Greenfield, MA studio, housed in a former shoe factory. The surface patterning is produced with hand-punched cards fed to the machine evoking the fast, technologically powered vertical manufacturing industry that is the source of both ecological disaster and violent working conditions. Through the works, I invite viewers to sit with the inescapable violence of late stage capitalism and tangible hope for resistance and change.