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Kelly Kaczynski (pictured), Sara Black and J Soto, Judith Leemann, Ben Fain, Conrad Freiberg.
Sculpture as relational and performative object.
Faith Wilding: Fearful Symmetries the first retrospective exhibition of the influential feminist artist who played a key role in the formation of the Feminist Art Program at California State University in Fresno in 1970 and at California Institute of the Arts in Valencia in 1971.
The exhibition opened at Threewalls in 2014 and travelled to the Pasadena Armory Center for the Arts (2015) and the Miller ICA at Carnegie Mellon University (2018). Smaller versions of the exhibition were also featured at the University of Houston, Clear Lake (2016) and Rhodes College (2015)
In March of 2020, (then former) U.S. surgeon general Vivek H. Murthy and Dr. Alice T. Chen penned an article for The Atlantic, positing the theory that the novel corona virus could cause a “social recession” due to unraveling social bonds caused by quarantine and social distancing measures. They explain how lack of social contact can lead to harmful effects on mood, health, our ability to learn and work, and our overall sense of community. And while Murthy and Chen were considering the impact of enforced separation due to a health crisis, the legacy of settler colonialism and white suprematism that has shaped capitalism, Western culture and specifically the United States, has long disrupted social bonds, destroying communities, histories and traditions in its wake. And the pandemic was not the only significant event of 2020. Multiple murders of black Americans by police officers set off months of protests, calls for defunding the police and institutional and individual reckoning. Alongside the pandemic, the impact of extractive and oppressive culture and policy was in sharp relief.
Living in a culture that places a high value on individuality and productivity tends to obscure the reality of interdependence. The rise of social media has led many to focus on producing the self as an isolated brand, interacting with others primarily through the mediated marketplace of digital platforms. Furthermore, the speed at which people connect digitally can lead to a false sense of both possibility and accomplishment, leaving many people feeling overburdened and overcommitted to projects that require more than a string of emails. With less and less connection to other people’s labor and cooperation (and thus appreciation for expertise), the idea that we might depend on one another can sometimes feel downright abstract. The pandemic further entrenched an already growing sense of removal.
I was invited to curate the 2021 NCECA Annual long before I had heard of COVID-19. Strangely, before the pandemic arose and obscured all planning, creative impulse, or sense of inspiration, I had been contemplating the theme of mourning for the exhibition. I had up until that time been following artists who were working with grief, illness or other adjacent concepts that dealt with how humans process or metabolize stress, anger, sadness or trauma – individual and collective. When the quarantine started I was only 6 weeks into my new job as Ox-Bow’s Executive Director, I was between homes and unsettled and found myself quarantined on campus in Saugatuck, MI – living at my job, as opposed to working from home. I was frozen and feeling bereft – as we all were, but in this case from a multi-layered feeling of disconnection. All familiarity was gone.
I spent most of those weeks on long walks and staring. Then I began to paint voids in an old book I found at work. A catalog of furniture drawings that I filled with ovoid shapes that represented both presence and absence. I struggled to finish books. I couldn’t write. Keeping Ox-Bow afloat was all I could (barely) concentrate on. Suddenly my ability to multitask was completely gone (and now, may have ultimately left me for good). When it came to putting together the call for NCECA, the only thing that made sense to was to reach out and ask: how are you feeling your way through this? How are you reconsidering what it means to be connected? To be in community? How are you taking care of yourself and others?
The call for submissions invited artists to propose work that considered the tension between together and apart, interdependence, belonging, hospitality and modes of support that allow people to extend themselves with mindfulness and compassion towards each other and to the non-human world. They were asked to draw on their personal and cultural experience to explore themes of the social and how social connection, as a renewable resource, is a means for addressing the challenges we face both individually and as a society.
The submissions were astounding. As a curator designing an open-call, I admit I had imagined a certain kind of response to the prompt. I had expected a lot of work made out of the need for self-care during a time defined by uncertainty. While not all artists found solace in their studio in the early months of the pandemic, I knew many who did, and given clay’s particular capacity for incorporating the body’s mark – its energies, anxieties, or meditations – I had presumed that a great deal of work would emerge from a kind of state of processing.
And while there were many submissions that had been wrought in the moment, there was also an incredible range of work that had come before the pandemic. In some ways this was more exciting, because it spoke to the fact that the issues the global pandemic brought to the fore, had been in the mind and the work of ceramic artists for years. Further to that, it indicated how adept clay as a material, and ceramics as a methodology, was at both processing and depicting complex socio-political issues. Through clay – a material that is so readily associated with the body – issues that deeply impact people’s mental and physical health, their families and communities, their livelihoods and futures are deeply attended too and richly represented.
Making the selections proved difficult; as so many of the proposals were such authentic responses to “social recession,” I struggled with editing. In the end, the resulting exhibition covers a range of topics inspired by this theme. Some projects speak directly to the pandemic, while others address mental health, labor rights, grief and mourning and the interdependence of the human and nonhuman world. Into these submissions I wove the work of a small group ofinvited artists: Anna Mayer, Erin Jane Nelson, Nicole Seisler with Georgie Flood, Heidi Lau and Manal Kara. Their work rounded out the submissions – contemplating fear, mourning, embodiment and mutuality. On one hand, I would suggest the exhibition is vast: showcasing the expansive ways people interpret and respond to a moment they are living through; but on the other I would say it is very grounded. Social Recession has a lot to say, but at its foundation, this is a show about connection and disconnection, compassion and empathy.
With thanks to all of the participating artists: Japheth Asiedu-Kwarteng; Jamie Bates Slone; Amy Bernard; Ashwini Bhat; Shannon Blakey; Jonathan Christensen Caballero; Andrea Connell; Connor Czora; Louise Deroualle; Emily Duke; Ana England; Sean Erwin; Marisa Finos; Rebecca Harvey; Sin-ying Ho; David Hollander; Drew Ippoliti; Qwist Joseph; Lauren Kalman; Manal Kara; Marina Kuchinski; Heidi Lau; Tiffany Leach; Dianne Lee and Robyn LeRoy-Evans; Clay Leonard; Liz McCarthy; Layla Marcelle and Jacob Raeder; Anna Mayer; Erin Jane Nelson; Kelly O'Briant; Ashan Pridgon; Kate Roberts; Kathryn Schroeder; Nicole Seisler and Georgie Flood; Lauren Skelly Bailey; Elisabeth Wainwright; Jo Watko; Flor Widmar; Adam Yungbluth; and Xia Zhang.
Between You and Me assembles a group of contemporary artists whose work engages in acts of connection and care. Whether working in their immediate communities or extending themselves to strangers, these artists employ practices that might model ways for fuller participation in the places we call home.
Featuring everyday objects including furniture, toolkits, books, menus, letters, signs, and other articles designed and made by artists, Between You and Me tackles a range of subjects—from hospitality to belonging—that intersect with ideas of making and sustaining community.
Artists in the exhibition: Chloë Bass, Sara Clugage, General Sisters (Dana Bishop-Root and Ginger Brooks Takahashi), John Preus, Benjamin Todd Wills, Christine Wong Yap, and Harriet Tubman Center for Expanded Curatorial Practice with Lisa Jarrett and Harrell Fletcher featuring the work of artist Lawrence Oliver.
Huge gratitude to curatorial assistant, Kat Zagaria Buckley.
Even thread [has] a speech examines how contemporary artists working in fiber materials and processes have inherited and broadened Lenore Tawney’s (1907–2007) groundbreaking experiments in the field.
Even thread [has] a speech showcases new, site-specific installations commissioned by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center as well as 2-D and 3-D artworks by Indira Allegra, Julia Bland, Jesse Harrod, kg, Judith Leemann, Anne Lindberg, Michael Milano, and Sheila Pepe.
Sara Black and J Soto (pictured), Judith Leemann, Kelly Kaczynski, Ben Fain, Conrad Freiberg
Theaster Gates (pictured), Cat Mazza, Sara Black & John Preus (pictured), Ehren Tool, Anthea Black, Mung Lar Lam, Carole Lung. Co-curated with Judith Leemann. More
Carrie Gundersorf (far left), Pete Fagundo (center) Todd Chilton, Jessica Labatte, Katy Heinlein (right), Andrea Myers, Tessa Windt. Co-curated with Jeff M. Ward. More
Anna Sew Hoy, William O'Brien, Michael Dinges (foreground), Scott Fife, Megan Gregory, Devon Knowles, Liz Magor (far left), Damian Moppett (middle ground). Co-curated with Luanne Martineau. More