NEW YORK, NY.- The Spotlight series includes a new or never-before-exhibited artwork paired with a commissioned piece of writing, creating focused and thoughtful conversations between the visual arts and authors, critics, poets, scholars, and beyond. In this iteration, the Spotlight features Sophia Narrett’s These Days Are Mine To Keep, 2025. A text by art journalist and editor Jacoba Urist accompanies the presentation.
On Sophia Narrett’s These Days Are Mine to Keep
By Jacoba Urist
When I first received the invitation to write about a never-before-exhibited Sophia Narrett work, I envisioned a nymphy, embroidered vortex, where a naked woman is tossed playfully over the shoulders of a man in a white suit [1] or an orgy of brides carouse under a purple cloud canopy [2]. Boogie Nightsmeets A Midsummer Night’s Dream. That we’d be delving into contemporary notions of desire, an area I hadn’t yet had the chance to explore in my writing. Perhaps, we’d unpack Narrett’s vision of the lure of flesh contact in the digital age. Or the power of fantasy in feminist politics and social media. Or symbols of sex positivity and the supernatural in twenty-first century art. In the era of Trad Wives and an American sex recession, what can we make of erotism today?
I’ve been following Narrett for the better part of a decade, from her breakout show at BRIC (2018), to winning Galerie’s inaugural Emerging Artist Award, to her most recent solo show at Perrotin, Carried by Wonder (2023). So, I expected her to unveil a fever dream mélange of tiny nude women and dapper men amid lush gardens, historical and low-brow touchpoints—each element rendered in the Boschian vein that’s earned Narrett a reputation for catapulting the bounds of her medium. Her signature, voluptuous aesthetic and stitched-layering technique has already carved out a place alongside Cecily Brown, Lisa Yuskavage, Faith Ringgold, and Bisa Butler. And I was here for all of it.
Yet when we met this summer to preview These Days Are Mine to Keep, I encountered something new. Like the greats before her, Narrett has branched off to redefine her own narrative. “Every piece is very personal and literal, and each part has a specific meaning,” she explained, as we surveyed the textile. This is the first work the artist has made since becoming a mother, and my eye instantly goes to a smiling woman, shooting breastmilk and finger spinning cabbages, basketball-style. “I was thinking about different spatial aspects in this image,” said Narrett. “The couple on the seesaw is on one plane. The woman with the baby on the hospital bed is rolling down towards the underwater scene with another woman and child. Then, this woman, shooting breastmilk out, and the man clutching his heart, dancing and watching her, are in their own space.”
These Days Are Mine to Keep traces the transmorphing cycle of marriage, sex, childbirth, and motherhood. Narrett found inspiration in turn of the century illustrator Harrison Fisher’s six lithographs, the “Wedding Series” which featured a couple through courtship, engagement, early marriage, and finally with “their new love”—an infant. In Narrett’s piece, a book reveals her version of a scene from Harrison’s drawings. A mother in a voluminous white dress, and a father, partly shadowed, lean over their baby. On the opposite page: a woman is half-submerged in a pond of lily pads, the bottom of which resembles a field of raw edge paper. Another copulating couple forms the fulcrum of a seesaw. Sex, the essential catalyst for the life cycle of this artwork, is a transformative moment of eroticism here. Somewhat obscured, and yet in plain sight. Indeed, an alchemy occurs in Narrett stitching this microcosm together: time elasticizes as Narrett’s characters outline an emotional, ontological framework for past, present, and future.
Like Edward Hopper and J.M.W. Turner’s atmospheric paintings, Narrett’s wall-hung collages are a distinct mood, but that require a particularly slow look and attention to microscopic detail: underwater, the mother is connected to an infant through a pale line of milk. An arc of cake icing illuminates the setting. “Making narratives that unfold simultaneously also lets me use multiple figures to describe different aspects of one experience,” says Narrett. For a while now, Narrett has been fascinated with theatrical bracketing and poet-literary critic Susan Stewart’s On Longing, a cultural anthropology of how miniatures (say, meticulously designed doll house furniture) mediate our experience of reality. In many ways, Stewart’s book clicked Narrett’s miniaturization process into focus. Narrett’s approach harkens Victorian fairy painting, a whimsical nineteenth century genre that allowed subversion of strict Victorian mores, creating an escapist, liminal universe. She similarly allows fantasy, romanticism, and motherhood to exist together in one spectacular hallucination.
As literal as they are, Narrett forms her images through a deeply intuitive process. “There were times postpartum where I knew I was truly in one of the best moments of my life,” she says. “There were also things that felt completely out of control.” In this way, a genuine sweetness pervades These Days Are Mine to Keep, alongside an undeniable tinge of humor from the spouting breastmilk, to the fornicating couple who support the seesaw, to the cherubic and twirling cabbage motif throughout. In our conversation, Narrett referenced the role of cabbage leaves as an anti-inflammatory, breastfeeding home remedy. As she spoke, the theatrical vision of giant fronds in my nursing bra made me feel wistful for my own son’s infancy and exhausted by the nostalgia. Ultimately, this mashup defines the transcendence of Narrett’s artwork, radiating the intimate and the universal; the ancient and the modern; the sacred and the profane.
[1] Whisper Like a Magnet, 2020. Embroidery thread, fabric, and aluminum, 33 x 40 inches (83.8 x 101.6 cm)
[2] Charms, 2022. Embroidery thread, fabric, aluminum, and acrylic, 25 x 31 1/2 inches (63.5 x 80 cm)
Sophia Narrett (b. 1987, Concord, MA) is an artist living and working in Washington, D.C. Narrett earned a BFA from Brown University, Providence, RI (2010), and an MFA from Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI (2014). Recent solo exhibitions include Carried by Wonder, Perrotin, New York, NY (2023); Soul Kiss, Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2020); Certain Magic, BRIC, Brooklyn, NY (2018); among others. She has been exhibited in numerous group exhibitions, including Stitched: Contemporary Embroidery, curated by Emilee Enders, Bedford Gallery, Walnut Creek, CA (2025); Soft Structures, curated by Jen Wroblewski, Jane Lombard Gallery, New York, NY (2025); Strings of Desire, Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA (2023); Home/Work, San Luis Obispo Museum of Art, San Luis Obispo, CA (2022); among others. Narrett attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME, in 2014. She is included in numerous public collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI; X Museum, Beijing, China; among others.
Jacoba Urist is an art journalist and editor living in New York, NY. She regularly writes about art for Artforum, The Financial Times, Galerie, Smithsonian Magazine, and W Magazine, among other publications. Urist is the New York Arts and Hamptons editor for Cultured Magazine.
