Nina Johnson is delighted to present a new body of work by Madeline Donahue alongside wearable and object-based works by Haus of Garbage.
The presentation brings together two practices that engage the body as a site of agency, examining how desire, protection, and self- definition are constructed against cultural expectations.
Madeline Donahue presents a body of work centered on sexual freedom, motherhood, and the reclamation of desire in middle age. A continuation of her longstanding engagement with themes of care and maternal identity, these works mark a new, candidly explicit direction in Donahue’s practice. Working in oil on canvas and colored pencil on paper, Donahue introduces a recurring body double that operates as a proxy for desire itself, costumed and hyper-present, existing alongside the figure of the mother. Her images are often wry and disarming, confronting questions about visibility, pleasure, and the labor of hiding women’s real, aging bodies in a culture shadowed by the male gaze.
In dialogue with Donahue’s work, Haus of Garbage presents sculptural objects and wearable head and body pieces constructed from safety pins and chain maille. Drawing from sacred geometry, medieval armor, and punk aesthetics, the works function simultaneously as adornment and defense. The head and chest pieces act as a form of armor, while the sculptural works transform humble materials into objects of reverence, highlighting protection and empowerment.
Together, the presentation frames sexuality and self-fashioning not as spectacle, but as deliberate acts of authorship and reclamation.
About Madeline Donahue
Madeline Donahue (b. 1983, Houston, TX) makes paintings, drawings, and ceramics that center on her experience of pregnancy, birth, motherhood, and owning a postpartum body. Her practice focuses on the surreal reality, physicality, emotionality, and interdependence of these experiences. Intimacy is at the core of all of her work, addressing the simultaneous existence of abject and sublime facets implicit in the relationship with her children and body. These explorations detail these experiences — working through the isolation, fatigue, failure, anxiety, and joys of parenting. In Donahue’s work, pendulous breasts flap, stretched belly skin sags or flows. Many of her works include “bathers” —a nude figure moving through water, referencing modernist portrayals of bathing women. She also references gymnastics, sports, and the “circus” of motherhood through titles, in the posture of her figures, and other visual representations. Each work is made efficiently in a fresh and fluid process that communicates and captures the immediacy of a present moment to create art.
Donahue’s works are held in the public collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and High Museum of Art, Atlanta, and have been exhibited at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft; The Church, Sag Harbor; and the Nevelson Chapel, New York. Her work has been featured in New York Magazine, W Magazine, the New York Times, Galerie, Mother Mag, Artnet News, The Cut, and Hyperallergic, among others. She received an MFA from Brooklyn College, NY, and a BFA from The School of The Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, Boston, MA. She is currently based in Brooklyn, NY.
About Haus of Garbage
Haus of Garbage’s practice began in 2018 following the loss of both their partner and mother, evolving as a response to upheaval and grief. A tailor by trade with a background in fashion, the New York City-based artist transforms the safety pin — a familiar, utilitarian object — into carefully constructed geometric patterns, three-dimensional chain maille, and wearable works of art.
Haus of Garbage’s work has been featured in Solace Magazine, and they recently created a site-specific body of work for Acid Bath House, curated by Jarrett Earnest at Nina Johnson. They received their AAS in Fashion Design from the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, NY, with a focus on Couture.
