After Flowers, by Patrick Costello

May 31 to August 16, 2025

About the exhibit

After Flowers takes inspiration from a Jacquard woven coverlet, produced in 1838 by the incarcerated weavers at Auburn State Prison. Under what became known as the “Auburn System,” inmates alternated between periods of silent labor and solitary confinement, forced to manufacture a wide variety of products, including shoes, home goods, and raw silk. The system resulted in the country’s first for-profit prison, an institutional paradigm we still see today.

The coverlet depicts a floral motif resembling a planned and walled garden, comforting in its ornate symmetry. Edenic verdure woven with red, white, and blue thread. I’m intrigued by the tensions embedded in this object’s beauty and the exploitative conditions surrounding its production. It is a distinctly American object woven in a city known both for its role in the movement to abolish slavery, and its perpetuation of slavery in its contemporary iteration – the prison industrial complex.

Drawing the coverlet to scale brings this history into conversation with our present moment. Using it in a site-specific performance allows for associative storytelling and embodied context.

Special thanks to Lizzie Hurst, Sy Lammer, Jessi Li, and Polina Bertou for drawing assistance.

Performance

Costello gave a performance about his installation at the opening on May 31, 2025. Below is a small video taste of that performance. For the full video, visit the Schweinfurth through August 16, 2025.

About the artist

Patrick Costello is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily in time-based mediums, including installation and performance. His practice explores the impacts of history on present ecologies – giving specific attention to gardens and the contentious relationships of care and control that define them. In 2024, Patrick received a MacDowell Fellowship and served as the Artist-in-Residence at Brooklyn Botanic Garden. He has exhibited work at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY; and Stone Quarry Hill Art Park, Cazenovia, NY. He has performed in venues including Ars Nova, New York, NY; The Philadelphia Museum of Art; and The Public Theater, New York, NY.