24 November 2025
Sabrina Gschwandtner, “Absinthe, Smoke, Sugar, Choice.” Review By David S. Rubin
Since 2009, when Sabrina Gschwandtner acquired a collection of archival film footage that had been deaccessioned from the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, she has been making geometrically patterned “film quilts” by sewing together filmstrips and exhibiting them over light boxes. They essentially combine the formats of Jeff Wall, who revolutionized photography by mounting transparencies over light boxes starting in 1978, and Faith Ringgold (1930-2024), who created her first story quilt in 1980. Whereas Wall’s intent was to imbue a photograph with cinematic grandeur, and Ringgold’s aim was in great part to tell stories using a craft technique traditionally associated with women, Gschwandtner’s art effectively achieves both.
Whether in color or black-and-white, her film quilts appear jewellike in a darkened gallery space through their sheer luminescence. The stories embedded within each are the tiny frame-by-frame narratives of her source material, archival filmstrips with a feminist bent in that they are usually from movies by and about women. Such content is the focus of “Absinthe, Smoke, Sugar, Choice,” which is centered on the overturning of Roe v. Wade and the history of representations of pregnancy in motion pictures. Specifically, the new film quilts are all constructed from archival film footage used in making a time-based “video quilt,” an expanded approach Gschwandtner introduced into her oeuvre in 2017.
Playing in a separate gallery space on a continuous loop, Gschwandtner’s video “Absinthe, Smoke, Sugar, Choice” weaves together fragments from two female-directed films depicting pregnancy that the artist found while looking for examples made prior to the 1934 Hays Code, which among other censored subjects banned childbirth and abortion from movies for nearly three decades. Along with these Gschwandtner included sections of a vintage documentary explaining the rules of the code and an interview with her mother, who had an abortion in 1967, six years before it became legal. Linking the different segments together are hand painted text frames with words implanted within diamond-shaped modules that replicate the patterning of the film quilts. Some sections of the appropriated film footage are also presented using the same patterned matrix.
The video opens with footage about the Hays Code. This is followed by the first archival film, Marvin Breckinridge’s 1931 documentary, “The Forgotten Frontier,” about the Frontier Nursing Service. The film includes scenes of midwives traveling on horseback to Appalachia and preparing for the delivery, as well as of the new mother holding her newborn. The second film is Alice Guy-Blaché’s 1906 short, “Madame’s Cravings,” which shows a pregnant woman sucking a lollypop, drinking absinthe, and smoking tobacco, while her partner tends to their other child. All of this culminates with her giving birth in public. Using colorful text frames, Gschwandtner then explains that the overturning of Roe v. Wade made her realize that she had taken her bodily autonomy for granted. Next, the artist’s mother candidly reveals the circumstances of her abortion, which she had done in complete secrecy at a cost of $1,000. The film ends with a question about what reproductive agency might look like when the artist, who is in her forties, reaches the age her mother is today.
While the issues that unfold in the video are troubling, especially in light of the current political climate, there is nevertheless a tenor of joy that is expressed through the cinematic aesthetics. For one thing, Gschwandtner is a master of cut up. Additionally, the wall mounted film quilts in the adjacent gallery literally glow with pride over the heritage of the American folk quilt. Viewed from a distance, they also resemble geometric abstractions by high modernists such as Josef Albers (1888-1976) and Sol LeWitt (1928-2007). Each work has been handcrafted with care; the contours and positioning of the filmstrips are slightly jagged, like the patchwork of an actual quilt, and stitching is visible. Additionally, the stories embedded in them, while minuscule in scale, reveal that there is more to the imagery than initially meets the eye.
For the two film quilts that were sewn together using footage from “The Forgotten Frontier,” Gschwandtner chose the “Kentucky Star” pattern, an eight-pointed star that is based on traditional Native American designs and which became popular in the early 1930s, around the time that the film was made and the Hays Code was soon implemented. In the other quilts, all of which employ filmstrips from “Madame’s Cravings,” the artist employed variations of the “Log Cabin” rhombus-filled pattern, which can be traced to the Civil War era and was a popular staple by 1906, the date of Guy-Blaché’s film. Additionally, Gschwandtner hand-painted several of the filmstrips according to a system of coding, using green for those depicting the protagonist consuming absinthe, and yellow, red, and blue for passages where she is shown with the lollypop. Beyond relating to the content, the addition of color significantly enhances the form.
Taken together, Gschwandtner’s video and wall works maintain a thoughtful conversation about relationships between technology and craft. Ultimately, however, they pay tribute to the strength and endurance of women through the generations, even in times like the current moment, when rights and liberties are once more being restricted.