Elijah Wheat Showroom is ensnared by the  daring solo installation, DEVOUR, by Michelle Silver at Mother-in-Law’s for Upstate Art Weekend opening 25 June and running through 19 September, 2026. 

A large-scale hand-crafted spider web and varied sized paintings reference and allude to the concept of Matriphagy, a behavior seen in certain arachnids (among other species), where the offspring consume the mother, most often leading to her death. Silver finds this relationship compelling, not necessarily in the singular mother/child relationship, yet considers how the American Mother is consumed by a top-down, hierarchical patriarchy. Noting the lack of substantial government support, the unrealistic professional ideals and the continued stripping away of bodily autonomy relating to female reproductive rights. Mothers-like the black lace-weaver spiders-are drumming, jumping and screaming for assistance yet are not provided a sustainable structure in which to co-exist putting their children first, as in a Matriarchal structure. But, through this type of hardship, mothers build their own structure, their own lattice of community through a webbed mesh of equal parts divine feminine and divine masculine support. 

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The act of being consumed by motherhood, while simultaneously building an intricate web of mutual support is a beautiful metaphor bringing power to these loose, intuitive, vibrant expressive abstractions. Bridging themes Silver has already addressed with an overtly political message from previous solo exhibitions. Silver’s paintings present a pictorial manifesto for coming into maternal fortitude, an ideal version of herself that she has not yet fully surrendered. Here, we see the archetype of Mother not as a martyr, but as a free-thinking, spirited, fallible beast, engaging with others to find mutual aid. 

Enter the cabin and a web-like structure is stretched and glistens like complex entrails, leading you to Silver’s oil paintings with rich, warm and crimson abstractions. Silver compels you to witness a point of tension between being consumed, and owning the pleasure of consumption. Finding a central shape resembling a vulva, a place that can find both ecstasy and pain, bringing life.

Paintings present bursts with steadied intention, and combine landscapes of emotional worlds with frenetic motion, and full throttle intuition guided by her subconscious. Here, between a space that exists in a larger ethereal space, Silver connects vulnerability, intimacy  fear, desire, mental health, trauma, and motherhood. Exaggerated strokes move, surrender and strategically pull a viewer closer to notice scraped away pigment, slashed, smeared applied paint with a sometimes heavy hand. All with a soft thickness, bold power, alluding to ecstasy, despair, rage and ultimately, our connections. 

Raised in the Catskill Mountains of New York, Michelle Silver (b. 1987) is a painter, curator and graphic designer living and working in the Hudson Valley, NY. She is the Gallery Director of Distortion Society, a combined art gallery and tattoo studio in  Beacon, NY that she founded in 2023 with her tattoo artist husband Bradley Silver.

Silver has exhibited throughout the US and in the UK; she has had five solo exhibitions, this is the first with Elijah Wheat. Recently, Silver had a public art exhibition with ChaShaMa in the lobby of 1155 6th Avenue, NYC. Her work is part of the Fidelity Investments Corporate Art Collection and in private collections throughout the United States and in Australia. She is a represented artist with Plastic Arts, has been commissioned by Chase Contemporary, and is featured in the Visionary Projects Directory. Silver was a Finalist in the Spring 2025 Homiens Art Prize and on the Extended Longlist for the 2026 Jackson’s Art Prize. Her painting and curation have been included in publications such as The New York Times, Hyperallergic, Cool Hunting, Arts to Hearts Project, Times Union, Two Coats of Paint, Artscope Magazine, Art Business News, and Chronogram.

Elijah Wheat Showroom (est. 2015) is a New York-based artist-run gallery and nomadic curatorial experience founded by Carolina Wheat & Liz Nielsen. Currently positioned on Main St. in Beacon, NY, steps away from DIA . The gallery once resided in Newburgh, NY on the Hudson River in an 200 year old raw historic factory building once, “Newburgh Steelworks” comprising 3390 sq/ft. Prior to that ,in a storefront in Bushwick, Brooklyn. The duo has put together over 75 exhibitions thus far. The gallery is named after their late son, Elijah, whose creative insight, righteous vision, perceptive being and stylistic voice for trendsetting embody the spirit that the Showroom honors. Elijah Wheat  artists are socially conscientious, politically engaged and reflective of a creative community striving to cultivate meaningful  interactions and instigate conversations about craft and concepts of aesthetics within commerciality. We promote the diversity of artists' voices with contemplative messages through a determination to make visual culture part of our everyday life, while advocating for visual art’s accessibility to varied audiences