Emerson Dorsch Gallery: Felecia Chizuko Carlisle: Matter is a Verb

Felecia Chizuko Carlisle: Matter is a Verb. Carlisle’s work challenges the divide between mind and body, subject and object, human agency, and natural forces.

Felecia Chizuko Carlisle’s solo exhibition, Matter is a Verb, at Emerson Dorsch confronts us with the ontological paradox of material existence. Carlisle’s work resituates matter as a dynamic and constantly evolving process, as something “in the making” rather than “made.” In her exploration of the material world through the lens of science and art, Carlisle invites us to engage with the boundaries between the physical and the metaphysical, the solid and the liquid, the static and the moving. These physical properties are neither fixed nor immutable but are, in fact, always in the process of becoming.

The exhibition’s title Matter is a Verb offers a conceptual challenge to understanding the relationship between being and becoming. “Matter,” when reimagined as a verb, becomes an act—an ongoing process of formation and transformation. It ceases to be an object and becomes an event, in constant flux, never fully realized. To speak of matter as a verb is to acknowledge its inherent instability, to refuse the notion that objects are ever truly fixed. It is this dynamic, performative conception of matter that comes alive in this exhibition. Here, materiality is not something we passively encounter, but something we actively participate in—shaped by our perceptions.