ROCHESTER, NY.- The George Eastman Museum is presenting the bite in the ribbon—a paper show, artist Erica Baum’s first solo museum exhibition, on view November 22, 2025 through June 7, 2026.

Through the selection, manipulation, and reproduction of existing printed materials, Erica Baum creates a poetry of word and image that inspires close looking and close reading. In the bite in the ribbon—a paper show, several series will be juxtaposed, revealing the interrelated explorations of her practice. The exhibition will feature early, ongoing projects and the artist’s most recent turns, with never-before-seen work throughout.

“Erica Baum has long been an influential figure in contemporary art and poetry,” said Daniel Peacock, assistant curator, Department of Photography, George Eastman Museum. “By bringing together several of her ongoing series, the exhibition invites viewers to experience how a continuing fascination with the instability of language and meaning inspires her celebrated work. At a museum with a unique dedication to photography, Baum’s innovative approach to the medium will spark cross-disciplinary connections.”

Baum's series Dog Ear will be presented in the Potter Peristyle. In this sustained body of work, the artist adapts the page marking convention of the dog ear to new ends. Baum folds the pages of found books to create a meeting between the surface of one page and the next. Through the diagonal fold, the pages and their contents meet in surprising adjacencies, rendering new texts and images from the original material.

In the Project Gallery, the interrelated series Patterns and Fabrications will show Baum's recent explorations of the visual and material culture of fashion and craft. In Patterns, the artist activates the lines, forms, patterns, colors, and texts found in the abstract world of mid-century sewing patterns. Fabrications continues from Patterns by opening into a broader visual culture of magazines, catalogs, and books related to fashion and craft, as well as the advertisements and coupons found within. Together, these series reframe the domestic imaginary present in the printed materials Baum recontextualizes. Engaging in textual and visual play, Baum invites us to experience what was once familiar in unexpected new ways.