DANA HEMENWAY & LEE MATERAZZI // Give me, body

On view May 17–June 15, 2025
Opening reception Saturday, May 17 (3–5pm)

Nationale is pleased to announce the opening of Give me, body, San Francisco-based artists Dana Hemenway and Lee Materazzi’s first collaborative exhibition, which will be presented in the Project Room. Their distinct practices find synchronicity in the re-purposing of utilitarian mediums to bridge body and craft.

Hemenway’s sculptures manipulate clay and fiber to create firm enclosures from which light tenderly breaks through. Extruded coils wrap like hands around a fluorescent bulb in Untitled (Frame #4 - Rhubarb Wireframe) and create a ledge upon which it rests. The gridlike scaffolding of the work gives the illusion of a barrier yet the emanating glow remains a focal point while the structure merely enhances and protects. In a similar balance, Untitled (Frame #1 – Hook Rug) melds clay and textile in a hook rug technique to form a fortunate synergy. Mounds of raw cord emerge from the frame for an unexpected, almost humanistic, texture not unlike tufts of hair. 

Where Hemenway’s works hint at anthropomorphic qualities, Materazzi employs her own form as subject of her creations. In the photograph Knuckles, her body remains obscured behind painted cardboard save for two hands protruding from triangle-shaped holes. They attempt to push through but are deterred, or shielded, from the exposure. A sliver of belly or torso (we’re meant to be kept guessing) and patch of furry skin likewise are visible through the abstracted background but remain just out of perception. Elbows leans against the wall in the corner, a repurposed metal folding chair, painted a soft peachy pink matching the hanging ceramics. The chair’s underside boasts castings of the artist’s elbows, an obscure and comical cue urging visitors to question its conception—how are we meant to sit on our elbows?

The collaborative piece, Give me, body—the exhibition’s namesake—merges the two artists' visual languages in a singular tandem work. Materazzi’s lips and three fingers, painted blue to match the rest of the scene, are encased by Hemenway’s careful tendrils of clay. The speckled glaze of the frame further deepens the connection, distinguishing this piece from the rest of the show. In these gentle considerations, Hemenway and Materazzi hold one another in conversation and in practice, allowing the body to double, triple, or even quadruple on itself.

Dana Hemenway is an artist based in San Francisco, CA. Her work is rooted in the excavation and elevation of utilitarian objects to make visible what has become habituated in our built environments. Hemenway uses these functional items as materials to form traditionally fiber-based crafts—lights and cords are woven through ceramics or the gallery wall, extension cords are transformed into macramé chains. 
Hemenway received her MFA from Mills College and her BA from University of California Santa Cruz. She has exhibited her artwork locally, nationally, and internationally and has had residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha, NE), ACRE (Stueben, WI), SÍM (Reykjavik, Iceland), Joya: arte + ecología (Spain), The Wassaic Project (Upstate New York), and at Recology Waste Management (San Francisco). Hemenway is a 2024 Eureka Fellow, Fleishhacker Foundation, and the recipient of The San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Grant as well as a Southern Exposure Alternative Exposure Grant. She has a public art commission at SFO’s Terminal 1. From 2015 to 2017, she served as a co-director of Royal Nonesuch Gallery, an artist-run project space in Oakland, CA. Hemenway is represented by Eleanor Harwood Gallery.

Lee Materazzi (born Fairfax, VA) is an artist from Miami, FL, now living in San Francisco, CA. She uses her body as a medium alongside color and texture, at times responding to remnants of material or work left by her children in the studio. Her compositions are off-kilter and investigate autonomy—rejecting acceptable social norms that regulate the human body. Materazzi’s works are considered sculpturally, but exist only temporarily. She documents what she creates with medium format photography to preserve it. 
Materazzi received her BFA in sculpture from Central St. Martins in London (2005). Her work has been shown internationally and is included in numerous public art collections, such as The Margulies Collection at the Warehouse, The Scholl Collection at World Class Boxing, and The Pérez Art Museum Miami, where Materazzi was included in the exhibition, My Body, My Rules in 2021. Materazzi is soon to be included in an exhibition at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum at the University of Oregon. This is her second exhibition at Nationale.

PRESS & MORE
Dana Hemenway and Lee Materazzi: Give me, body, Lindsay Costello, EverOut, May 2025

IMAGES

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Give me, body

A
vocabulary
based on after
birthing
phone calls between naps and school pick-up
between work and the flu
trust in knowing
raw is ok
impromptu
we’ll figure it out
what to frame
what framing is—
to place something within
create a plan
a rigid structure that surrounds or encloses
a persons body with reference to size or build
exposing oneself through little holes.
glory hole—
is a partition, often between a public lavatory
for people to engage in sexual activity
or to observe the person on the opposite side
sex in public places
intimacy within a disembodied object
between two
art, people, things
we speak around the objects we make
I use my body as a substrate alongside cardboard
I use my body as a source for replication
lots of pushing against
lots of pressure
paint scrapped with fingers
clay manipulated with hands
veins carry blood to the heart
hair-like mounds push through
skin, scared, bumpy, smooth
peachy, clay, green, teal blue, lavender.
She engineers materials to move around light
to literally charge, plug in and create
electrical currents moving through
making you want to touch and feel
illuminated
held
strongly nested
delicately, robustly
womb-like.