Dancing offers freedom that isn't found in the rituals of the day to day. Modern lives centered around electronic devices are stagnant — it’s sleep, stand, sit, repeat. Barbara Felix’s series, The Glorious Way She Moves, offers a reprieve from this monotony in each portrait as she paints a montage of the individual dancing. The works at MercuryProject are recent additions to this ongoing series as Felix experiments with new materials: cloth and fabric paint, before her upcoming show at Austin’s art gallery, Women & Their Work in the fall.
Felix paints multiple stills onto a single composition, arranging them to intersect and overlap. There is variety in how they are reimaged. Some bodies are fully rendered, as seen in the second layer of Amalia (2025), or they are reduced to colorful outlines like Bennie (2025), but most fall somewhere in between. This distortion of perspective and abstracted form, combined with the sheer textile that moves with a gentle breeze, effectively creates the sensation of time passing and movement in the otherwise still medium. Felix expands on the experience with sound, offering a QR code by each portrait that opens a SoundCloud file of the individual speaking about themselves and their relationship with dance.
The flexibility and sheerness of the fabric allow the works to potentially function sculpturally, introducing a third dimension shaped by display. Felix and I spoke on the phone a few days after the opening, and she shared that she continues to explore how to hang the new works as she is learning and experimenting with the new materials. She plans to add a third layer to each portrait and considers suspending them in a circle throughout the gallery space—exemplifying connection and community, themes that ground The Glorious Way She Moves. This approach would reveal new facets of each piece and create space for the individual portraits, contrasting with their current flat, static presentation at Mercury Project.
The range of emotion visualized in the body offers a liberating experience of each individual work. Amalia’s contained, hard movements in the first layer are mirrored by the second layer’s pose — leaning-back with her hands on her head, both layers showing a release of anger and frustration. Beverly opens up to the viewer, with her shoulders withdrawn and eyes closed until suddenly her body is relaxed and open to the viewer. Anel’s wide arm movements expand through the composition, she’s not afraid to take up space and be unapologetically queer. The portraits are a juxtaposition of dance — the universal human experience when dancing interwoven with the unique experiences of the individual.
Glorious@Mercury is on view at Mercury Project until March 29, 2025, gallery hours are by appointment only. There will be a meet-and-greet with the artist on March 18th from 5-8PM and a closing reception on March 29 from 3-5PM.
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