Is laughter ever carried to such an extreme as to bring tears into your eyes?
Carla Liesching
Opening Reception: September 3, 5-6:30pm
Image-Text-Collage Workshop: September 15, 12-1pm
Artist Talk: September 17, 5-6:30pm
The Handwerker Gallery is pleased to host Carla Liesching for her exhibition Is laughter ever carried to such an extreme as to bring tears into your eyes? running from September 3 - October 3, 2026. We will host an opening reception on Thursday September 3rd, from 5-6:30pm in the gallery.
Is laughter ever carried to such an extreme as to bring tears into your eyes? weaves together fragments of image and text from two disparate yet connected archival sources, employing photo-collage, erasure poetry, and installation to unsettle, intervene, and disrupt the narratives embedded within them. Responding to the urgency of our moment in which dominant versions of “history” have had and continue to have substantive and combustible consequences, the exhibition strategically resists stable or singular stories, instead foregrounding ways of historicizing that are incomplete, contested, contingent, and in continuous negotiation.
Carla Liesching (b. 1985, South Africa) also invites to the gallery a series of sculptural activations created with Igor Arume (b. 1991, Brazil) and Sam Margevicius (b. 1989, USA), as well as three large-scale site-specific murals produced in collaboration with Carla Rangel García (b. 1990, Mexico).
Our open hours for the 26/27 school year are 10 - 6pm M/W/Th/F, and Saturdays 10 - 5pm; we remain closed Tuesdays, and Sundays.