The Middle Room is pleased to present Things Nobody Knows But Me, a solo exhibition of a series of digital prints by LA-based artist Cindy Craig in our project space. This exhibit will be on view from July 20 - August 10, 2024, along with a concurrent connected group exhibition in our main space entitled Here I Can Creep Smoothly On The Floor, And Fit In That Smooch Around The Wall, So I Cannot Lose My Way.

Things Nobody Knows But Me is a one-woman show, curated by Shannon Rae Fincke in dialogue with the early feminist literary classic The Yellow Wallpaper—written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and an immersive theatrical production of Yellow Wallpaper 2.0 2020—written by playwright Jennifer Maisel, directed by Emily Chase, and performed by Karen Malina White, with Rob Nagle. This unique interdisciplinary curation concentrates on the interconnectivity between Cindy Craig’s work from her Invisible Wallpaper Series with The Yellow Wallpaper and Yellow Wallpaper 2.0 2020—a contemporary re-examination of the 1892 short horror story about a woman driven crazy by the rest cure for postpartum depression: now set in a covid-era quarantine. The riveting conversation between this solo exhibition in our project space, held in conjunction with a concurrent group show in our main space, the original text, and the new play inspired by it—contextualizes and illuminates the disturbing and oppressing ideas, constraint, isolation, suffering, alienation, as well as the resistance—detailed in the 19th century’s text to today’s still ever-present misinformed and patriarchal attitudes towards the mental and physical health of women. Cindy Craig, a multidisciplinary Los Angeles-based artist, has always been interested in what goes on inside the home behind closed doors. Craig’s work closely examines her own family history—contrasting her father’s patriarchal idealism of the 1950’s "fantasy wife" with the reality of her mother’s struggle with postpartum depression, which ultimately led to her parents' divorce. With a gallows sense of humor, Craig delivers a searing feminist message beneath the pretty, sometimes silly exterior. Her most personal body of work, Invisible Wallpaper Series, featured in this exhibition, connects to her own feelings as a child growing up in a home where she felt invisible.