Stampede exhibition text

Stampede debuts a new installation by Kitchener artist Barbara Hobot.  Although a shift from Hobot’s sculptural use of fabric and fur, Stampede is a continuation of the artist’s search for meaning in the connection between luxury and death.  This show combines three unique elements: 15th and 16th century transi tombs, contemporary hip hop fashion, and the artist’s irrational fear of earthworms. 

Prevalent in Western Europe after the horrors of the Black Plague, transis were tombs or headstone engravings commissioned for the ecclesiastic or elite and depicted the deceased, not as a revered member of society, but rather as a decomposing body writhing with frogs, snakes, and worms. Often inscribed with texts forewarning viewers of their immanent fate, the transi became a way for the pious and proud to show humility before reaching the afterlife.  Hobot’s vinyl wall drawing is an altered depiction of just such a transi -- that of Ralph Hamsterly, rector of Oddington church, England (d. 1518).

In Get Rich or Die Trying, Hobot references the contemporary fashion trend of decorated hoodie sweatshirts, often patterned with images of skulls and dollar signs.  Instead, Hobot’s sweatshirts are patterned with images of gold worms.  They become a kind of modern day shroud, ironically highlighting the unusual disjuncture between symbols of death and those of excessive luxury. 

In the third element of her installation, Hobot has handcrafted over one hundred earthworms which appear to be running amok on the gallery wall.  Describing their mass congregation as a “worm uprising”, the artist has anointed each worm with a golden finish and has adorned some with the most treasured of invertebrate bling: rhinestones.  Their extravagant appearance and insurgent formation positions the worm no longer as a lowly creature, but an object of beauty and force to be reckoned with.  As one French 15th century epitaph reads, “Miserable one, what reason have you to be proud?/ Soon you will be as we/ A fetid cadaver, food for worms”.