Punching Bag 03 by Amy Cannestra

Amy Cannestra: Liminal Dwelling

On View Staring May 23, 2026 in City View Gallery 

Opening Reception | Sunday, September 27, 2026, 12 - 2 PM

The Rochester Art Center presents a solo exhibition of Milwaukee-based artist Amy Cannestra. In this exhibition Cannestra examines how domestic spaces—traditionally understood as sites of comfort and refuge—can quietly transform into environments shaped by self-loathing, comparison, and depression. Through gestural pastel drawings, hanging and mixed media sculptures, and video works, the exhibition traces a shift in perception: what begins as a sanctuary becomes a crucible of diminishing thoughts and emotional unrest. Beds turn cold and unyielding, and bathrooms become stages of scrutiny—sites where the body is both observed and negotiated.

The artworks in Liminal Dwelling interrogate the performative nature of everyday life and the toll that composure takes on the body and mind, foregrounding the tension between what is presented and what is suppressed. Domestic materials such as bedding are activated alongside the body itself: foam mattress pads are transformed into suspended, punching-bag–like forms that absorb both violence and tenderness, while layered, gestural drawings record shifting emotional states through color, pressure, and repetition. Video works extend these explorations through acts of endurance, positioning the body as both subject and instrument.

Across mediums, the repeated act of squeezing—hands pressing into fabric, knuckles whitening against flesh, the body contained and restrained—emerges as a central gesture. These actions embody quiet battles with self-criticism, trauma, and the cultural expectations placed on womxn to maintain composure. The exhibition dwells in contradiction, asking how spaces meant for rest can instead amplify cycles of self-judgment and exhaustion, and what it means to live within that tension.

Rather than offering resolution, Liminal Dwelling makes visible the often-private negotiations of mental health. By foregrounding vulnerability and shared witnessing, it opens space for communal reflection and recognition. Even within repetition, fatigue, and perceived failure, a fragile but persistent thread of emotional survival remains.