Matriclysm: Pretty Deadly
An AR-15 (the weapon of choice for many mass murderers in the United States) in cotton-candy pink, deviously inscribed with the title of this show, floats chillingly above the artifacts. By conflating a seemingly girlish decorative style with an object associated with extreme (and almost always masculine) violence, Jewel has created something surprisingly hard to look at, much less contemplate, coupling its almost unthinkable destructive potential with gender politics and an unsettling closeness to the objects beneath it. It’s unclear whether the gun is aimed by the matriarchy, or at it.