"I made the study for Hoist and then the oil painting at the beginning of quarantine. With this composition in my mind’s eye, I looked at images of crowd surfing, cheerleading towers, and the cascading space in Ruben’s Elevation of the Cross. Like we all were, I was trying to make sense of the absence of touch as a necessary way to take care of each other, and wanted to make an image about this based in touch and interactions now absent from the social landscape. Losing my grandmother at this time, I witnessed my family navigating this and the figures in the painting perform how the support, lifting, and care during times of crisis looks and feels to me." - Emily LaCour
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