When they come into contact with water, the spider’s silk threads become shorter, thicker, and stronger. Perhaps the stiffening of the threads allows them to better withstand the weight of the morning dewdrops; or maybe the restructuring of the web serves to regenerate threads damaged by insect capture, in a self-repairing process. Whatever the explanation, we know for certain that the spider’s web changes its internal structure in response to the external forces and stresses to which it is subjected, reacting to stimuli from the surrounding environment.

Understanding how the structure of an object, a person, an architecture or a cultural construct works is a theme central to Sophie Hirsch’s research. With her solo exhibition Regroup, Retrace, Unfollow at Galleria Doris Ghetta, she takes her investigation a step further with a new series of sculptures and installations created for the occasion.

Conceived over the course of 2021, the exhibition is based on the observation that the past months have radically reconfigured the balances which we had become accustomed to; the systems that governed our lives have undergone a considerable impact, and from appearing stable and unchanging, they have now become uncertain, constantly shifting, in a state of flux. With Regroup, Retrace, Unfollow, Sophie Hirsch elects instability as a tool for exploring and understanding reality: not an imbalance of forces to be corrected, but a new relationship between opposing tensions to be integrated into our systems. Therefore, for the artist, instability is an attitude, a way of engaging with the world.

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