Future Fair 2025

Harsh Collective is pleased to announce Curtain Call, a trio presentation at Future Fair, featuring Catie Cook, Masha Morgunova, and Rosabel Rosalind. The booth, which examines the complex relationships between truth, perspective, and performance through innovative approaches to framing, will be on view from May 7th to 11th at booth U14 at Chelsea Industrial.
Each artist employs distinct theatrical devices that transform viewers from passive observers into active participants, subtly challenging traditional power dynamics of viewership and representation. These intentions are further realized by the interactive booth featuring paintings, drawings, and custom theater flats.
Cook’s trompe l’oeil stage curtains create an intimate dialogue between viewer and subject, simultaneously drawing us in while acknowledging the artifice of the staged scene. Morgunova demonstrates her impressive range of mediums by adding frames and sculptural elements that push her paintings beyond traditional boundaries, lending both literal and emotional depth to her ethereal, stoic figures who refuse simple categorization. Rosalind’s incorporation of set design elements – flat wooden stage decorations that accompany her painting and drawing installations – extends the artwork into the viewer’s physical space. By constructing environments that viewers can step into, she creates an immersive reality while using theatrical flats to maintain a conscious awareness that the work is fiction.

“In a moment where politics feel increasingly theatrical,” explains Etta Harshaw, founder of Harsh Collective, “it is vital that viewers remember their agency. Curtain Call reminds us that even as audiences, we can see how perspectives are established and maintained and how we can explore these circumstances critically to restore hope and diminish despondency.”

Through their varied approaches to framing and staging, these artists explore how perspective shapes truth while quietly subverting traditional modes of representing and viewing their subjects. Their work reminds us that in both art and life, how we frame our perspective fundamentally shapes what we see and understand as reality.