Unruly Matter

The sewing machine is an art tool and was left by her mother, who was a descended from a lineage of seamstresses and lace makers. Kunigk was always drawn to it, but something she avoided for too long; now she uses it intensively but not to craft objects of utility or perfection like her ancestors, but more subversively to stitch together absences and losses through quiet, intuitive gestures that resist resolution. Thread becomes a drawing that hesitates mid-line; pigment bleeds into near-invisibility. Nothing insists on clarity. Her work becomes a kind of unspoken language, much easier to fell than said—where vulnerability and doubt overtake logic or certainty.

“Unruly” here signals a refusal to conform to polished expectations: her materials are allowed to wander, glitch, and break . “Matter” speaks to both the physical stuff of her work (thread, pigment, image) and the deeper subjects she addresses—absence, memory, vulnerability and displacement.

Rather than controlling every element, Kunigk creates space for fragile imperfections, instability, and unresolved emotion. Unruly Matter becomes a strategy of letting go, allowing fragility, adaptation, and ambiguity to guide the process.