Assembly presents Magnum photographer Carolyn Drake’s “Knit Club,” the result of a several-years-long collaboration with a group of women Drake met while living in Water Valley, Mississippi. The nature of the club is ambiguous. It is a cross between a gang, a cult of mysteries, and a group of friends bound by secrets only they share. Drake shies away from literal descriptions, and leans toward the surreal and mysterious to present a different perspective on southern femininity and motherhood that feels subversive. The viewer is encouraged to question preconceptions of what it means to be a “woman.” Drake and her subjects collaboratively play with hiding and revealing the women’s faces and bodies, retaining a sense of interiority for a subject that has historically been fixed and exposed by the male gaze. Responding to the writer William Faulkner, the images are enigmatic, Gothic in style, and richly layered with a symbolism that resists interpretation. As with much of her earlier work, Drake’s subjects are also artists, integral to the construction of the photographs. “Knit Club” presents a community that manages to exist outside the gaze or control of men. Women, children, and mothers, shrouded in masks and mystery to live a life on their own terms.