All posts by jcho1239

Current Exhibition

Cyclicality And GIS Structuring In Jeffery Hampshire’s Orientation

This Is A Long Exposure from April 23rd to May 12th, 2025, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by James Cho

Pinned to the front wall that greets visitors entering the STAMP Gallery are dozens of photos taken by Jeffery Hampshire in print, film, or as projections that comprise Orientation (2025). Another set of photographs in print and film which are stapled together in a triangle, and another film-printed photo of power lines oriented in a tube-like composition sit on a podium in front of the wall. Together, they act as a representation of the cyclical relationship between humans and nature, and by extension, memories of space and place. 

Hampshire places a lot of emphasis on the centrality of travel in Orientation. For humans, pictures of roads, trash that is waiting to be collected, an abandoned bike, and books from a Little Free Library represent the transition through the space between to points. For nature, pictures of bike trails, trees, overgrowth, and rocky paths showcase the other side of the cycle. Together, they create a dynamic in which trash travels between humans who create it and nature, before presumably returning to humans in the form of recycled items, lest it be abandoned like the abandoned bike or lone trash can under a tree. 

Jeffery Hampshire, Orientation, 2025. Inkjet print, transparency film, projection. Photo Credit: James Cho

Furthermore, Hampshire adds more depth to his take on travel in relation to space and place by using multiple mediums to display the photos. Namely, the pictures that are physically nailed to the wall tell the story of the connection between human trash and nature, as well as the space between them. Meanwhile, the photos printed onto film represent the deterioration of memory about that cycle. As one travels from place to place, the time that it takes to travel across the space between two points results in a slow loss of memory of these physical places. Hence, the film represents memories of places that are beginning to be lost to time, as seen in how some of there are empty spaces between the print, film, and projected photos where additional photos (i.e. memories) of places might have once existed. 

How then, might we maintain these memories? How can we lessen the impact that space has on “understood memory” and the memories that Hampshire has pinned to the gallery’s walls? Through the projected photos. More specifically, through the medium that they represent: Geographic Information Systems (GIS). GIS software, in short, is a field where hardware and software capture, store, and visualise geographic data. Images of specific places are captured through Light Detection and Ranging devices (LiDAR) like mounted cameras, that are used to scan different points around a space to recreate 3D rendered structures on a computer. In Orientation’s case, this means capturing different points along the biking trail that Hampshire travels along. Things like power poles, biking and pedestrian signs, and sewage tunnels that are either on or visible from the biking trail are captured in this way and then projected onto the wall. Thus, Hampshire implies that though we may lose our memories, or attempt to store imitations of them in film as a form of reconstructed memories, by collecting geographic data we can maintain near-exact replicas of our memories to better understand them.

This expression of the distance between points in a cycle and how memories of them are retained in works like Orientation embodies the idea of playing with “still life in motion”. The pictures, whatever their medium may be, reinforce the notion that time is the “keystone” needed for their production while also being the factor that leads to the deterioration of memory. Hampshire’s work offers three new ways in which our environments are reconstructed and preserved through images: through inkjet-printed photos, film, and GIS reconstructions, which are projected onto a surface or screen. Altogether, Orientation can be understood as a culmination of A Long Exposure, encapsulating the prolonged and evolving interaction between people and their environments over time.

Current Exhibition

The Past and Future of Voting Rights and Racial Profiling in Shroeder Cherry’s Cute to Criminal and Voters #33 Test

Open Ended Narratives from February 18th to April 5th, 2025, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by James Cho

As visitors enter the STAMP Gallery to look at Shroeder Cherry’s work, they are greeted by two pieces, one of which being Cute to Criminal (2023) which is part of Cherry’s Future Voter Series. Like much of Cherry’s work on display for the Open Ended Narratives exhibit, Cute to Criminal presents commentary about the ways in which African Americans are mistreated and profiled by law enforcement. 

There are many aspects of Cute to Criminal that could be analysed, from the predominant locks and keys, the playing cards, the watermelon slices, the shards of glass, and so on. When I first saw this piece, though, the first things that stood out were: the portrait of a young black boy; the washboard and the small metal bars at the top of it; the sign language that spells out “Cute”; and the grandfather clock pendulum at the bottom of the piece. Why? Because all of those factors work to present the dualism that Cherry expresses about how African American boys are perceived by law enforcement not as future voters, but as future criminals. 

Shroeder Cherry, Future Voter Series, Cute to Criminal, 2023. Mixed media on wood; 47 x 17 inches. Photo Credit: Júlia Sodré

How do these elements work to answer Cherry’s question posed in Cute to Criminal, being: “At what age do I go from cute to criminal?” Cherry’s use of the grandfather clock pendulum represents the ticking of time until black children, especially young boys, are profiled and attacked by police officers as if they were adult men, resulting in them getting shot by bullets akin to the ones lodged in the portrait frame of the young boy. The bars at the top of the washboard work to that same effect, resembling prison cell bars where boys like the one in the portrait might end up behind simply for the colour of their skin and gender. All while they toil away in low-wage jobs that have historically served white people in the United States. Thus, the answer to Cherry’s question is that it doesn’t take long at all for black boys to “go from cute to criminal” in the eyes of the law. 

This issue, then, speaks to the second piece from Cherry’s Future Voter Series that drew me in, being Aspects of Future Voters #33 Test (2023). If young black men are considered criminals in the eyes of the law, the law will and has always worked against African American suffrage to prevent “criminals” from having a voice. In Voters #33 Test, Cherry provides two excerpts about voter “literacy tests and other methods [that] were designed for single purpose: to stop Black Americans from voting.” Tests that weren’t rendered unconstitutional until 1965, since they were considered justified due to the historical profiling of African Americans as criminals starting from a young age. This crooked bending of the legal system’s rules, represented by the zig-zagged rulers in Voters #33 Test, was just one of many ways that the government worked to block any and all future African American voters. 

Shroeder Cherry, Aspects of Future Voters #33 Test, 2023. Mixed media on wood; 31 x 24 inches. Photo Credit: Júlia Sodré

One other rule that bent the law that Cherry represents in both Cute to Criminal and Voters #33 Test is the “Grandfather clause” that was passed in Southern states after the Civil War. It is one of the “other methods” mentioned in Voters #33 Test and given physical form in Cute to Criminal through its grandfather clock pendulum. Namely, the clause prevented all future African American voters from voting by saying that only “those who had enjoyed the right to vote prior to 1866 or 1867, and their lineal descendants, would be exempt” from literacy tests and other “educational, property or tax requirements for voting”, systematically targeting recently freed slaves who were not exempt (Britannica n.d). The clause and literacy tests worked to stop African Americans from using the key to attaining equality: the freedom to freely think and vote for representatives.

Why does this still matter today? In the wake of recent attacks on DEI initiatives, mass government layoffs, and hostility towards any non-white individuals, we are still living in a world where our rights are infringed upon. The Voting Rights Act that was passed in August of 1965, just barely under sixty years ago, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that acts as the foundation of DEI sixty-one years ago (they aren’t even old enough to count for the full retirement age!), are in jeopardy. What Shroder Cherry purports about discrimination against African Americans and by extension other racial/ethnic/gender-based rights is something that we should be wary of in the coming years because we might face the loss of these pieces of landmark legislation in the near future.

Current Exhibition

Shelter and Language in Tori Ellison’s Sky Writing

We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity from October 16th to December 7th, 2024, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by James Cho

What is a home? Is it a shelter? A place where we are safe? Our families and friends? What happens when one becomes adrift, and in need of a new home? These are the questions that Sky Writing asks visitors when they enter the Gallery. Comprised of six panels draped from the ceiling along the Gallery’s window display, visitors can walk through the array of panels that each contain different prints inspired by submissions from international students attending UMD as well as Tori Ellison’s artwork, in collaboration UMD MFA Candidate Varvara Tokareva.

The first and third panels display a bird species called Swifts who spend much of their time in the air, migrating from place to place as they continuously seek new shelters. Complimenting this, the back side of the panel contains 7,139 words for “shelter” in spoken languages, and 293 in written languages from across the world. Together, they represent immigrants in the historical narrative of the US wherein those seeking a new home, shelter, and economic stability come to the States as “birds of passage” much like the airborne Swifts on the panels. A narrative that has always fluctuated, and one that in light of recent years become more prominent, making spaces like our University where many immigrants or second-generation can find and take shelter a lifeline for many, where they can freely express their languages and cultures.

Specifically, Natalie Molina highlights how immigrants in the US have very often been treated as these “birds of passage” – brazos fuertes – who since the 1910s come from overseas or land to get a job, before being sent back to their home countries only to repeat the cycle over again (Molina 163). The unity in the languages included on the panels thus acts as a cry against being a swift or bird species that is in a constant state of placelessness. They represent the desire to find a home, a shelter, the desire held by international students like those who contributed to Sky Writing to have stability and define their own identities beyond the label of ‘immigrant’. 

Tori Ellison, Sky Writing, 2024. Screenprinting, paper, paint and wood, 8 1/2 x 36 in each.

But what does “home” mean for international students attending UMD? The second and fourth panels are based on contributions from UMD students and College Park community members who provide answers to that inquiry. Three phrases are displayed on the second panel as answers to Ellison’s question. The consensus was that “home” could be anything from a house, a sense of belonging, a neighbourhood community, and oftentimes chosen family. The fourth panel is a few short statements written in Japanese by a student attending UMD, who highlights similar views about how home is a place of safety, and how irreplaceable it is to them since to have a home is to be whole. 

Having lived outside of the US for much of my childhood, viewing other students’ responses in Sky Writing, particularly the back of the first and the front of the second panel hit home for me. I grew up mainly in Singapore (among other countries), and looking through Ellison’s piece felt both nostalgic and uplifting. Going to an international school where children would often only stay for a year before leaving through elementary and middle school, I got to interact with so many people from very different backgrounds, especially at school festivals, while also experiencing the “bird of passage” loss when friends would move away. Seeing the unity in the hundreds of words for “shelter”, as well as how other students like myself valued the need to have a sense of belonging, stability, and oftentimes chosen family due to the nature of moving to new places so regularly, was reassuring and validating. It also pressed the importance of places like the University, where immigrants can feel safe and find communities on campus at places like MICA, the multicultural centre, and the vast amount of student unions or organisations for Latine, Asian and Pacific Islanders that celebrate their identities as a home-like place. 

This, combined with Pablo Neruda’s “Sonnet 94” on the fifth panel, and Varvara Tokareva’s print on the sixth panel, again answers the question that Ellison puts forward about what home means to us. That the lack of a shelter, a home to return to in order to find comfort, whether that home is a place or a person, creates a sense of exile, isolation, and colourlessness. Together, all six panels in Sky Writing highlight the necessity of a home that pervades every other artwork in We Live in the Sky since each panel highlights how UMD students and College Park residents value home and how it defines their identity, and how the disruption or displacement of their home destroys their sense of self and belonging, because without a home to shelter in they would be just like a swoop of swifts coasting through the skies. 

Tori Ellison’s work is included in We Live in the Sky: Home, Displacement, Identity at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from October 16th to December 7th, 2024. For more information on Ellison, visit https://www.toriellison.com/. For more information on We Live in the Sky and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/articles/stamp_gallery_presents_we_live_sky_home_displacement_identity. 

Current Exhibition

Assimilation, Loss, and Home in Kat Navarro’s Kalapati Without a House

The Digital Landscape from August 26th to October 5th, 2024, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by James Cho

The process of immigration has always been a difficult one, no matter the time, place, or people involved in it. What most people don’t fully recognise, though, is that immigration is more than the journey alone. More than the arrival off a boat or the crossing of a border,it is a process that starts before the journey is taken, and in the case of a successful journey, continues for years after. 

I’ve personally experienced this process multiple times, having moved repeatedly across many different countries that I’ve called home in Asia. The feelings of uncertainty that come with repeatedly losing friends, a sense of familiarity, and over time a slow degradation in my own native French that my mother and I continue to speak over the years as we moved from China, to Singapore, to Korea, and then to the States. Wherein the process partially assimilated us into each place as we learned to call them all home before having to leave each one as we engaged with the many cultures and people in these countries. 

In our current exhibition, The Digital Landscape, there is no better representation of these layered notions of home, assimilation, loss, and language that come about due to immigration than Kat Navarro’s Kalapati Without a House. Tucked away in the Gallery’s nook at the very front of the Gallery, visitors can sit and watch Navarro’s animation where every two minutes, hands that support a Bahay Kubo (a kind of house indigenous to the Philippines) strip away a part of it until the last hand drifts beneath the waves. As this occurs, less and less of the animated birds come to roost in the Bahay Kubo, a parallel to the how the pigeons that Navarro’s family raised in the Philippines slowly left one by one before her family immigrated to Baltimore. 

Kat Navarro, Kalapati Without a House, 2023. Mix Media animation project, 16:00.

By animating a symbolic representation of her family’s experience with immigration overlaid with narration by her Tito (uncle) and Lola (grandmother) in Tagalog, Navarro’s animation captures many aspects of immigration. The loss of home and everything that was once familiar to her family in the past, the slow degradation of language that came with and continues to come with assimilating into another country, and the need to construct a new home in an initially unfamiliar and oftentimes hostile environment.

It specifically acts as a reflection of the past, of a version of a place that was once “home” that likely doesn’t exist anymore today as it once did decades ago, or at least to a recognisable degree. The animation is also a snapshot of the present and future where immigration continues to break down oral storytelling and language over time, evident in the untranslated narration of Navarro’s Tito and Lola as an ongoing part of their assimilation into American culture, while still retaining some of it by talking to one another.

Conversely, while Kalapati Without a House embodies loss that stems from immigration, the animation also embodies the notion of survival. Navarro’s family, like many immigrant families across the globe, persist despite the loss of the Bahay Kubo and untranslated Tagalog dialogue. Though difficult to create, I believe that the animation creates a sense of hope and familial unity amid the pain of losing one’s home and connections like her family’s pigeons to one’s original home. In the wake of assimilation and the degradation of culture, immigrants survive and work to resist this post-journey development to build new homes for themselves and their children. A new home in a new landscape, a home that will resist and survive the fate of its predecessor who can only exist in a digital environment like Navarro’s animation. 

Kat Navarro’s work is included in The Digital Landscape at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 26th to October 5th, 2024. For more information on Navarro, visit https://katnavarro.com/About-Contact-1. For more information on The Digital Landscape and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/articles/stamp_gallery_presents_digital_landscape.