Cara Despain & Antonia Wright at Untitled Art, Dec 2026

WAAM presents Ruptures, bringing together the work of Cara Despain and Antonia Wright. The presentation considers what happens when intervention and resistance are no longer relegated to the periphery, bringing gestures of disruption to the forefront as acts of reclamation.

Despain’s graphite drawings, inspired by stills from declassified footage of nuclear tests, and curio cabinets containing Depression-era uranium glass are seductive, unsettling, and otherworldly. The works evoke a “dark sublime”, pointing to histories and forces often buried from view but whose consequences remain visible across environmental and social landscapes.

Wright’s cyanotypes similarly become sites of intervention. By hammering and shattering glass over chemically treated paper and photographic exposures activated by sunlight, she embeds gestures of force, fracture, and resistance directly into the image surface. The shattered glass becomes both a material and symbolic rupture, challenging ideas of permanence, control, and stability. Each crack and mark becomes a record of impact and transformation, suggesting disruption itself as an act of resistance.