“Fistful” by Hailey Johnson 
June 21st, 2025 3-5pm 
Hammerspace Gallery 

In a room gridded by hundreds of stripped sticks, order, control, containment, even self-erasure seems to have won. This is a site of emotional compression. Every line suggests a task completed, a feeling suppressed or carried for someone else. This is a landscape of caregiving and overstimulation. A space that holds the desire to be everything for everyone. And yet, it is also a space of choice, and ultimately, of release. 

Hailey Johnson was inspired by a gesture she observed in her young son. As he gained control of his fingers, his impulse to test the limits of what he could hold in one hand felt like a universal impulse. Hailey turns this into a ritual of emotional labor and endurance. 

In a gallery filled with sticks, she silently picks up one stick at a time, attempting to hold as many as possible. The longer she persists, the more the room thickens with tension. Her refusal to perform ease speaks to the raw truth of maintenance and of being overwhelmed. 

Referencing the historical and political symbolism of the “bundle of sticks”—from the fascist fasces to queer slur reclamation to fables of strength through unity—the performance becomes a meditation on multiplicity: of roles, expectations, identities, and emotional burdens. The result is a durational act of devotion, a slow unraveling, and a moment of human-to-human presence that calls for tenderness.