A Moving Exhibition About (Re)Location - Inside Art with Michael Rose
Thursday, August 05, 2021
At the Bristol Art Museum, a new exhibition explores themes of displacement with such power and poignancy that it can rightly be called a must-see show. On view through October 3 in the museum’s sundrenched galleries, (re)location includes a tight collection of work curated by Rhode Island artist and Bridgewater State University Professor Mary Dondero. All the featured pieces probe notions of place, movement, and belonging from intensely personal perspectives of five art makers working in a range of media. It is a deeply moving show.
The centerpiece of the exhibition is an expansive installation, titled Strand, conceptualized by Nafis M. White and García Sinclair which fills the main gallery of the museum. Its scale encourages visitors to circumambulate, while considering a 400-year history that begins with the enslavement of Africans in the United States in 1619. The piece is made up of items ranging from hair and rope to beads, shells, and cotton. Alongside these physical elements, White lists “embodied knowledge, ancestral recall, and audacity of survival” among the media included. This moving linguistic detail is not to be overlooked and adds to the experience of this remarkable work of performative sculpture.
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Nearby, assemblages and paintings by Mercedes Nuñez are centered on the physicality of belongings as well as the tendency to map and triangulate space, travel, and journey. These works are richly textured and full of details that tell stories. When asked what she hopes visitors will take away from her pieces in the show, Nuñez responds, “I hope the viewer sees the jarring effects of immigration and the displacement of an ordinary family. Also, to witness the arc of the lead protagonist–how she finds solace from the anguish of that displacement through the language and empowerment of art.”
In photographic images by the University of Rhode Island Professor Annu Palakunnathu Matthew the malleable identities of Indian call center workers are depicted through the use of lenticular printing. This technique allows dual images of the same sitter to be seen at the same time in different sets of clothes, expressive of two distinct selves. The series is evocatively titled The Virtual Immigrant. The photographs are accompanied by the voices of the sitters, adding an auditory dimension to visual art and deepening the perception of the subjects as individuals.
Other photographs on view by Tom Kiefer starkly capture the machine-like apparatus of border enforcement. Through quiet object-focused images, Kiefer documents the detritus of immigration along the southern border of the United States. Innocuous items like lollipops and cough drops are removed from individuals as contraband and therefore take on new meanings. In photographing these items, Kiefer captures both the humanity of their original owners as well as the unsettling and dehumanizing treatment of immigrants.
One of the most striking works in the show is a figurative painting titled Floating by Iranian artist Shabnam Jannesari. It depicts a serene-faced woman in a gravity-defying pose, awash in color and pattern. When asked what being included in the show meant to her, Jannesari said, “This exhibition offers me the opportunity to communicate with a greater audience and empower women. My work challenges the oppression of women by the Islamic patriarchy in Iran. The opposition is not explicit or radical in my paintings and drawings, rather, I seek to create a different kind of world for my figures, one that has a quiet kind of power, and is intimate and free. The heterotopic dreamscapes I construct create the possibility for escape from the reality of oppression, a space in which the women in my art and in my life are empowered and can exist freely. These paintings tell the stories of the life I left behind."
Within this intimate exhibition, viewers will experience diverse points of view and approaches in a strong body of work. From photographs and paintings to collage and installation, the show is formally varied and brings together a talented pool of storytellers who are all adept at informing, educating, and moving viewers through their respective works of art.
Alongside the stunning show in the main gallery, the Abbot Low Gallery and Brick Gallery have complimentary works by Michael Diaz, Bao Huynh, and Anaika Joseph as well as The Secret War- The Hmong Story, a bright and intricately crafted Hmong Story Cloth (Paaj Ntau), adding yet another dimension to a fantastically multi-faceted exhibition.
(re)location will be on view at the Bristol Art Museum through October 3. Gallery hours are Thursdays - Sundays from 1-4pm each day. Admission is $5. On Thursday, August 5 from 5:30 - 7:30 pm, the museum will host an accompanying reception. This will feature a poetry reading by Halima Ibrahim, the state’s Youth Poet Laureate, who will recall her own abrupt emigration experience amid the Arab Spring uprising. Learn more at www.bristolartmuseum.org.
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