Friday, February 21, 2025

CNY Artist Initiative: Courtney Rile: Moments in Between
Everson Museum of Art

Everson Museum of Art
401 Harrison St., Syracuse

Courtney Rile was the mother of a toddler when the emergence of COVID-19 triggered mandatory stay-at-home orders in March of 2020. The change, confusion, and uncertainty of that time mirrored the feelings she experienced during her "fourth trimester" — the 12 weeks in a mother and baby's life after the baby is born. Rile turned to photography to help process both motherhood and grief, and to cope with the changes in the world around her. The resulting portraits of friends with young children, as well as portraits of her daughter and other images captured in Rile's home, made during lockdown and its immediate aftermath, explore the passage of time and the duality of inward and outward looking.