Teach Me To Love This World by Kei Ito, October 19 to December 10, 2022, at the Stamp Gallery | Written by Oliver Foley
When you think of an art gallery, what first comes to mind? For many, the mental image consists solely of paintings upon a blank, sterile wall. Yet, in Kei Ito’s new exhibit at Stamp Gallery, we find ourselves breaking out of this often limiting preconception. Ito’s Teach Me To Love This World is a work of installation art: the individual pieces are designed specifically for the space that they inhabit in the gallery, creating a unified sensory experience beyond that of traditional framed artworks. Ito constructs a chaotic audiovisual environment of multimedia artworks which immerses the viewer in the “liminal space between peace and war,” as he describes it. “I started as a photographer where I had this idea that photography can exist beyond a ‘frame on a wall,’ where art can be activated by the inclusion of audience and space,” Ito said. “Thus it was natural for me to dive into the world of installation art.”
Inherent to the art of installation is the theme of impermanence. The experience of an installation is unique to the space and time it is designed for. Although many philosophies regard change as a problem to be solved, Ito adopts it as a means of artistic expression. Every component of this exhibit accentuates the underlying impermanence of art, war, peace, life, death, time, space, and sound. One piece in particular, which highlights a very distinct take on the theme, is Talking Heads.
Kei Ito, Talking Heads (2022). Analog radio, two-channel audio, media player, radio transmitter, acrylic paint. 9-minute loop.
Talking Heads consists of two radios, each playing a different channel. Yet, these are no ordinary radio stations: Ito broadcasts his own audio through the airwaves. A transmitter sends two different signals to each radio, named Peace Radio and War Radio. “I want the audience to place their head between the two radios, getting disoriented by the bombardment of audio … when the audience places themself in the middle of these two radios, the positioning becomes the metaphors of the liminal space we as society exist in right now,” Ito replied when I asked him how he intended the piece to be experienced. Just as war and peace are fleeting things, so too is the auditory experience of this piece: the chaotic mix of passing words, sounds of war, and analog static puts the listener in a trancelike state.
“Who will be the next sacrifice for war…” the radio says. As if caught in a disagreement, the parallel radio replies, “who will be the next sacrifice for peace?” They argue atop the slow hum of wind, as tension rises. Air raid sirens begin as the urgent, foreboding tones of news broadcasters creep up from the static. The anxiety builds to a horrific crescendo as the sounds of war fill the room. Then, as suddenly as they began, the sirens cease, and the broadcast returns to a quiet hum, only interrupted by the refrain, “Who will be the next sacrifice for war… who will be the next sacrifice for peace.” But this peace is only transient, no matter how comforting it may feel.
When I first placed my head between the radios, I was surprised by the altered state of sensory perception it provoked. During the “wartime,” I could hardly recall the sense of calm that the peaceful, churning static inspired. This piece encourages the listener to notice themselves becoming “trapped in the moment” and become aware of their unconscious fear of change.
Talking Heads is just one of many pieces in this exhibit which exemplify impermanence. Elsewhere in the gallery, Ito presents the audience with text made of loose ash, infinite permutations of projected text, relics of the past and forecasts of the future. All of reality is governed by change, and Ito’s embrace of change in Teach Me To Love This World results in one of the most compelling installation exhibits you will have the pleasure of visiting.
Teach Me How to Love This World: Kei Ito will be on view in The Stamp Gallery at the University of Maryland, College Park from October 19 through December 10, 2022. For more information on Kei Ito and his work, visit http://www.kei-ito.com/.
Unspoken Volumes from August 29th to October 8th, 2022, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Oliver Foley
The Made Maker (top) with Risk Dawn (bottom) (both 2022)
As we enter the final week of Unspoken Volumes, Hae Won Sohn’s show at the Stamp Gallery, I find myself considering the effects that this art has had on me through hours of sitting with it. Although the impressions of gallery visitors, curators, critics, and contemporaries often define the written legacy of a work, many fascinating perspectives are held by the humble docents and guards of the art. Sometimes spending longer hours with the art than the artists themselves, art attendants are seldom without a unique take on the works which they oversee. In my hours of sitting at the desk, walking through the gallery, and gazing at the beautiful forms of Sohn’s sculptures, one specific theme repeatedly came up: shadowplay. The shadows of Sohn’s artworks were as tangible and concrete as the three-dimensional works of plaster, clay, and paper.
In addition to simply providing an exhibit’s worth of art for the Gallery, Hae Won Sohn played a large role in the installation of the exhibit. As a result, every decision of the gallery’s flow contributes to her great design. The lighting design, in particular, captured my eyes through my days in the Gallery. The angling of the lights and placement of the pieces resulted in stunningly complex shadows, such as The Made Maker.
“Blurry objects,” a concept Sohn developed through this work, is exemplified in the play between the tangible and intangible objects of the show. Shadows take the form of transition, blurriness of the hard-edged spaces we inhabit; potential beyond what is defined by the physical and temporal world. Shadows define and defy our brain’s understanding of the world, of the three dimensional, and even of the passage of time. By constructing objects which exist simultaneously in two- and three- dimensional worlds, Hae Won Sohn communicates the incommunicable blur of space through the “gray areas” in between. Shadows depend on the three dimensional to exist, but objects in space depend on light and shadow to be observed. These were the recurring thoughts in my mind all throughout the time I shared with these pieces.
Growing Thin (2022)
Sometimes, the ornaments and subtle architectures of the spaces we pass through go unnoticed. Perhaps this subconscious “smudging” of landscapes is the blur which Sohn pursues. Yet, even more than the architectural thresholds, edges, and accents, the most subconscious element of our day-to-day perceptions is the shadow. We train ourselves to ignore it, just like we ignore the trim of the rooftop, the rosettes and finials of our furnishings. By leaving nothing but the liminal form, the ornament and its ever-constant shadow, Hae Won Sohn gives the viewer the eyes to see what their brain blurs. One particularly beautiful example of this theme is the piece Growing Thin. My hours at the desk provoked thoughts of chicken-and-egg games between the illumination and the illuminated. Magic is alive within the plaster-cast object and its own light-cast into the two dimensional. I found myself profoundly affected by Sohn’s installation.
With only fours days left to see Unspoken Volumes, I encourage anyone to come give it one last look!
Unspoken Volumes from August 29th to October 8th, 2022 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Hannah Zozobrado
How is it possible for the complexities of freely expressed art to be effectively labeled, when they can only be limited through the confining medium of words? In my eyes, words of finite interpretations hold nearly no significance against the boundless expositions of art; in my eyes, to find the right words befitting of the entity that it describes is a mission in itself.
Yet, the New York-based artist Hae Won Sohn beautifully, all-encompassingly captured the essence of her solo exhibit through her title “Unspoken Volumes,” in which her work ironically does speak volumes. A deep dive into the morphological anatomy of the two-word exhibition title may look like this:
Unspoken(adj):
1. Quiet; silent 2. Not communicated; not expressed; no wall labels 3. Tacit; “as if…”
4. Figurative.
Volumes(n.):
1. The space within or occupied by a form 2. The power of sound 3. Individual books in a series.
4. Physical.
Hitting the mark across all meanings of each word, “Unspoken Volumes” has the perfect telltale title to accurately embrace the environment in this exhibition:
Sohn’s art resides in a quiet room of homely, charming set-up, in which her digital media and horizontally-aligned works – all comprising and occupying their respective spaces – either adorn the walls or stand upright in different sections of the gallery, as if they are continuations of one another; as if they are to be explored like separate parts of the same series. Her art sits naturally in its space, comfortably bare without wall labels as though without a name, only casually existing between the Figurative and the Physical — between the Unspoken and the densely Voluminous.
Beyond a lesson in semantics, “Unspoken Volumes” is more than just a flexible name; in the same way that words can have multiple meanings, and in the same way that the words “Unspoken” and “Volumes” have connotations nearly opposite of the other, each seemingly singular piece by Sohn can be interpreted to have more than one layer – more specifically, two. It is, in fact, Sohn’s intention to “[outline] blurs and [trace] gray areas in between… material and form; subject and object.” Finding the middle ground between the two calls for their distinction, first. Here is where Sohn cleverly uses the concept of doubles to emphasize blurriness.
When I first arrived on campus and had the chance to walk through the gallery, what first struck me was Sohn’s way of working with the gallery space; light and shadows, as well as color, seemed to be a medium for her to further explore the blurry middle between the metaphysical and physical.
For example, the image to the left is a photo of Sohn’s plaster piece, situated in one of the more hidden and overlooked spaces of the gallery solely due to the fact that the area is blocked off by a bench and projector; even I, myself, nearly missed this piece due to the plaster’s color sneakily blending into the wall.
However, upon closer inspection, the light and shadow — two generally rivaling concepts — merge at some point along the body of the crescent-looking plaster. Given that the piece’s title is “Luna,” which is the Spanish translation of the English “Moon,” this is a reference to the two sides of our moon — the illuminated side that we always see, and the dark side that we never see. Interestingly enough, the line at which light and dark meet is not vertically straight throughout the entire piece, as though there is no clear center; a blur.
Rather than only the lighting helping scope the bounds of this conceptual blur, Sohn uses color. The image to the left is a photo of another one of Sohn’s works titled “Owl,” which was made with plaster, gypsum cement, and oxide pigments.
As I thought about what it meant to give this two-piece work a singular title, I realized that this ostensible ‘split’ between the coupled left and right was a red herring. For this particular piece, it took having to discover the title “Owl” and ridding my earlier notion of duality in order to see that opposing color schemes served to distract from the bigger picture of an owl staring back at me.
Upon first looking at the concept behind “Unspoken Volumes” and walking through the art on display, I couldn’t help but remember an exhibition I loved and got to see a few weeks prior over the summer in Washington D.C.’s National Gallery of Art; I took the following photo of the exhibition outline in awe of the concept:
That had been my first time internalizing the purpose behind doubles and dualities in art. Having Sohn’s work now displayed in the Stamp Gallery is a pleasant treat to expand my thinking of how art’s engagement with doubles can be delivered through various means in order to produce different meanings in ways that often cannot be described with mere words.
Sohn’s art once fueled an interesting conversation I had with my friend. My friend, who stopped by the gallery to see the Unspoken Volumes exhibition, had asked me: “Which do you think is more important in art, intention or craft?”
I think I must have said something along the lines of: “Maybe somewhere in the [blurry] middle.”
Unspoken Volumes: Hae Won Sohn will be in The Stamp Gallery at the University of Maryland, College Park from August 29th to October 8th, 2022. For more information on Hae Won Sohn and her work, visit https://haewonsohn.com/
Unspoken Volumes from August 29th to October 8th, 2022, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Ellen Zhang
Protruding from the white walls of the Stamp Gallery is Lion Heart – a small yet powerful sculpture. Despite the fact that it is the size of my hand, artist Hae Won Sohn has fit in a plethora of sharp edges, rounded surfaces, and all sorts of visual textures. With a somewhat rounded top and pointed bottom, the contours bear an uncanny resemblance to an actual heart. Aside from its physical similarities, Sohn’s sculpture also resembles the metaphorical meaning of a lion heart. From a denotative perspective, a lion heart is someone who is courageous and risk-taking. In Lion Heart, I see an artist who exhibits these qualities.
Shifting your position to the right of Lion Heart, you’ll notice two interesting choices Sohn has made in her creative process. First, a rigid edge that cuts through the piece like a shard of glass penetrating the heart. It protrudes out at an angle, obstructing the viewer’s ability to see the entirety of the piece from one position. Through this bold choice, Sohn exemplifies the concept of boundaries – something that forces us to look at things from different angles (almost literally) to find our answers. As a viewer, I find myself viewing her art from all sorts of directions and viewpoints to answer my own questions about the connection between the sculpture and its name.
Then, shifting your position to the left of Lion Heart, you’ll see a different concept embodied by the sculpture’s forms. From this perspective, the lines are soft and well-blended into flat surfaces. Everything seems blurred, but this is on purpose. Once again, Sohn has cleverly incorporated a way to express the metaphorical themes of her exhibition through the sculpture. The practice of blurriness, as described by the artist herself, is based on the notion that “some ideas and forms seem to become clearer in the blur.” According to Sohn, “This perhaps comes from my understanding of blurriness as more embracing of intrusions and embodying higher potential than what appears to be more defined.” The contrast between the smooth, flat surface and sharp ridges on the right side indicates that Sohn is “embracing intrusions” during her creative process. As a result, her work leaves viewers with an understanding of the nuanced meanings behind her work. When observing Lion Heart from the right, you can see qualities of bravery and confidence through the jagged and well-defined edges. From the left, you can see qualities of calmness and simplicity through the blunted surfaces. The duality in the interpretations of her work emerges because of Sohn’s own ability to embrace intrusions while creating her work.
Sohn is certainly an artist with a “lion heart.” She welcomes disruptions in her own thinking process, thus enabling her to incorporate bold contrasts in the forms and shapes of her work. Through Unspoken Volumes, Sohn is even able to challenge her viewers to include boundaries and blurriness in their own thinking. She encourages us to surpass boundaries and look at questions from all angles. She also encourages us to embrace intrusions in our own thought processes, sparking internal conversations provoked by gray areas – terms, subjects, and objects that do not conform to a singular category.
Lion Heart is included in Unspoken Volumes at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 29th to October 8th, 2022. For more information on Hae Won Sohn, visit https://haewonsohn.com/. For more information on Unspoken Volumes and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery.
Unspoken Volumes from August 29th to October 8th, 2022, at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by James Cho
Resting on the floor of the Gallery sits Wallflower (orchid), a mixed-media sculpture by Hae Won Sohn, among the other wondrous pieces of the Unspoken Volumes exhibition. One of three artworks titled “Wallflower” in the gallery, (orchid) was born from Sohn’s desire to create artwork that stands by itself without a pedestal or wall, while the other two sculptures, Wallflower (thatch village) and Wallflower (King Moth) occupy wall space. Moreover, though it may not seem like it, Wallflower (orchid) is made of cardboard collected from boxes of shipments to Sohn’s studio that she folded repeatedly, as well as tape, pushpins, acrylic, and plaster painted over with a coat of light purple. Like a real orchid, visitors can distinguish the smaller petals flanking the mouth of the orchid and the third, larger petal behind the mouth of the flower. But if you kneel down and take a closer look at Wallflower (orchid), you can see how this blur of materials comes together to create not just the general form of an orchid, but also the organic folds and even the veins of the flower. This speaks volumes about the unity Sohn is able to achieve in juxtaposing both geometric and organic forms through materials of unique origins.
Hae Won Sohn, Wallflower (orchid), 2022. Cardboard, tape, pushpins, acrylic, plaster.
It also speaks to the very essence of what orchids represent in places like Singapore, where I grew up. Notably, the national flower of Singapore is the Vanda Miss Joaquim orchid, hybridized by the orchid’s namesake Agnes Joaquim in 1893, itself underwent a rebirth recently. The recategorization under the Papilionanthe genus acts as an apt development in the context of the “blurriness” concept that Sohn expresses in all her artwork in the Gallery. For reasons besides this name change, the Miss Joaquim orchid was chosen as the national flower because:
“As the flower most associated with hybrids, the orchid is also a symbol of our multicultural heritage. It is representative of the harmony among our ethnic communities, as well as with our many foreign visitors.”
A bouquet of Papilionanthe Miss Joaquim orchids, originally bred in 1983 by Agnes Joaquim.
Mr. Mah Bow Tan, Minister for National Development, at the Singapore Orchid Show, 2006
Through this symbolism, Wallflower (orchid) serves as a manifestation of Mr. Tan’s belief in the harmony of the Singaporean people, in the very same manner in which the mix of cardboard, plaster, and other materials come together in Wallflower (orchid) today. Like Singapore, the artwork as a whole blurs the lines between its materials to become a single being. Just like how the hybridized shape and color of the Miss Joaquim orchid carry this message of cultural unity, Wallflower (orchid) carries the stories of its individual parts that have blurred together into this new design.
The choice of giving the title of “wallflower” to this piece is quite puzzling, though, when compared to the other two works in the gallery that bear the same title. The formal definitions for a wallflower is that of a European flower that is either yellow, orange, or brown in nature, or when describing a person characterized as being shy or awkward. But unlike Wallflower (King Moth) and Wallflower (thatch village), which are both situated on walls facing away from the gallery’s windows and in indirect light as their name implies, Wallflower (orchid) does not live up to the definition of a wallflower. Instead, it basks in the direct light of two overhanging spotlights on the open floor of the Gallery. Because of this stylistic choice in (orchid)’s presentation that contradicts the concept of a wallflower, visitors may wonder as to why Sohn chose to do so, especially since the other two Wallflower artworks are of similar proportions to Wallflower (orchid).
Regardless, both Wallflower (orchid) and the Miss Joaquim orchids illustrate how a simple yet beautiful design composed of materials with differing origins together represent the many “unspoken volumes” of their past and future. Whether that be the materials of the Wallflower (orchid), or Miss Agnes Joaquim’s hybridization of orchids into the Papilionanthe Miss Joaquim, both capture the essence of harmony and unity in their current form.
Hae Won Sohn’s work is included in Unspoken Volumes at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 29th to October 8th, 2022. For more information on Hae Won Sohn, visit https://haewonsohn.com/. For more information on Unspoken Volumes and related events, visit https://stamp.umd.edu/centers/stamp_gallery.
Unspoken Volumes from August 29 to October 8, 2022 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Isabella Chilcoat
Hae Won Sohn, a New York-based artist and craftswoman, has graced the Stamp Gallery with a new art presence that straddles the unspoken and the overlooked crevices between shape, color, and space. Dovetailing three-dimensional objects and multimedia work, Sohn’s minimalist creations consume the gallery’s white walls in a breathy pastel mirage that I desperately want to consume. I cannot describe her palette better than melted ice cream colors complete with an offering that ranges from neapolitan to mint chip. After visiting this exhibition viewers will leave wanting at least two scoops.
Hae Won Sohn, chocolate milk cow milk, 2022. Plaster and oxide pigment. Currently on loan at the Stamp Gallery, College Park, MD.
But the real scoop is better than everyone’s favorite creamy delight. Take chocolate milk cow milk, 2022: Made of plaster and milk chocolatey brown oxide pigments, this triptych (collection of three) and a half cast sculpture set blooms from the gallery’s main wall. Parallel to the exterior windows, chocolate milk cow milk is visible to any person perusing the hallway, but it is worth moving closer. From a more intimate distance, one can examine the swirled pigments within each object’s silky crescent surface. Chocolate milk cow milk exemplifies Sohn’s conception of “burry objects,” a phenomenon she describes as both a “physical and metaphorical quality of [her] work in [her] vision which occurs as a result of exploring and adjusting distances through(out) time.” None of her works are detached from their origin, process, or the space they occupy. Accordingly, each of the works in Unspoken Volumes encompasses the cooperation of every contributing source which ensured the presence of the objects in the room. This includes the personal and the material antecedents that work together to make her art making possible – initial inspiration, the sources of material, molds, media, availability of exhibition space, reception of the work, and individual response to name a few. Through an appreciation of each work’s origins coupled with the present viewing moment, Sohn’s art grows in complexity while appearing as a simple form. In essence, the space feels complete. Her art is so inclusive to process and presence that walking into the gallery translates a deep calm or inner satisfaction.
” Some ideas and forms seem to become clearer in the blur. This perhaps happens from my understanding of blurriness to being more embracing of intrusions and embodying higher potential and energy compared to what appears to be more defined. “
Sohn, unspoken volumes artist statement, 2022.
An all-encompassing blurriness arises through observation of Unspoken Volumes from a macro and micro perspective. The space as a whole breathes as if every object pumps in a synchronized heartbeat while the individual pieces still emit a cadence of their own. I can relate to the idea of blurriness in my own attempts to grasp the origins of each piece of art and my present interpretation at the same time. These lines of comprehension become fuzzy the harder I ponder over one of Sohn’s smooth sculpture surfaces and the shadows cast between objects in a set. I am overwhelmed by the compositions Sohn has crafted through fundamental art elements juxtaposed with their conceptual depths that exceed the places from where I stand to observe them. Even the best images fail to capture the multitudes Sohn’s works contain; something as simple as an alteration to lighting or angle of viewing reveals a whole new landscape for each piece. I argue the modesty of abstracted forms alone attests to the beauty of contemporary art as a whole, and Unspoken Volumes is no exception.
various angles of Sohn’s chocolate milk cow milk, 2022, in the Stamp Gallery
Come visit the Stamp Gallery to explore this existential landscape cast by Unspoken Volumes for yourself, and tune in to hear from the artist herself on Thursday, Sep 8, 2022 during her artist talk in the space from 6:30-8:00 pm.
Hae Won Sohn’s work is included in Unspoken Volumes at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from August 29 to October 8, 2022.
Sohn will deliver an artist talk on Unspoken Volumes in the Gallery on September 8, 2022, 6:30-8:00pm. For more information on Hae Won Sohn, visit https://haewonsohn.com .
alternate universes: visualizing queer futurisms from February 10 to April 6, 2022 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Isabella M. Chilcoat
“Curves are natural, neutral in nature the same way they are on the body,”
according to one captivated and insightful gallery visitor speaking on Camila Tapia-Guilliams’s panel painting, The Muses.
Last Tuesday, I led a tour through the Stamp Gallery’s exhibition alternate universe: visualizing queer futurisms, which will be on view until April 6. I relate to the viewer’s fascination as I ponder the sloping red outlines of nude human forms that sweep in circular progression over the organic grain of an untreated wood board. The repeated subject exists in absolute harmony with the medium as complimentary topographic strokes in cobalt, evergreen, and burnt umber caress the two natural entities — the painted and the painted-on. Initially created as a segment for their final portfolio before earning a degree in studio art from the University of Maryland, Guilliams describes The Muses as a manifestation of their own identity exploration as a non-binary person. The Muses considers the history of the exploitation of women for the inspiration and progression of male success, the objectification of the female-presenting nude, and the male gaze in works of art and other representations of women. All of the abuses of both form and person perpetuate an inhospitable climate in art spaces around the globe toward any person or persons presenting visible signs of difference from the longstanding status quo centering predominantly white cis-gendered men’s work. Tying seamlessly into some of the exhibition’s main points of discourse, The Muses points to this ostracization as it extends beyond the gallery walls, festering in the woven fibers of society.
Detail, The Muses
The panel’s dimensions of 24 x 48” translates roughly to a sideways movie poster. To behold this work in person, however, will initiate a deeper, tumultuous effect on the senses — the eye devours the information on the wall while plunged into summits then chasms of visual form and carried into an awareness of the self, the artist’s humble request for empathy. Studying the faces reveals subtle expressions that only suggest which emotions could fill the empty spaces between the red outlines constituting their bodies. Human curves echo natural wood grain as if to parallel the carbon impermanence of them both.
Finally, when the eye latches onto the last red of the right-most body that bends its head at an acute degree toward the left, the passageways of line carry the viewer back to the beginning to repeat the infinite process of discovery. To intone the conversation with my tour member once again, I consider how the world (or the universe) would look in the absence of bodily objectification, of gendered conventions sustained at the detriment of equity. What iterations of the future can exist from these histories?
Camila Tapia-Guilliams’s work is included in alternate universe: visualizing queer futurisms at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from February 10 – April 6, 2022.
Camila Tapia Guilliams will be joining two other artists in the Art of Community Care: Collaging Collective Action hybrid event in StudioA and zoom on March 16, 2022 at 6:00PM.
alternate universe: visualizing queer futurisms from February 10, 2022 to April 6, 2022 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Marjorie Justine Antonio
Sirens, newsreels, and the impending war, Static sparks with the brush of our hands, Messages in my palm. And I swipe, scrolling furiously; Fuel on empty. A deep breath. A whirl, a spin, a spiral, Close one eye, then another. A deep breath. Pull yourself up, Open one eye, then another. Gaze upon this place, Not new, not mine, A world not too different from the last, But where we can find What we need To survive.
– The Preface, Marjorie Justine Antonio
alternate universe: visualizing queer futurisms offers a look into how artists and creatives re/imagine history by shifting perspectives from mainstream narratives, responding to historical and contemporary issues, and engaging in the practice of world-making. This exhibition is rooted in the frameworks of futurist thought and aesthetics, from Afro-Futurism, Latinx futurism, Indigenous Futurism, Chicanxfuturism, and Techno-Orientalism, and explores futurism’s intersection with queerness. Here, queer futurisms are shaped by cross-cultural articulations of humanity met with burgeoning technology. Our queer future is a deep mediation of the past to inform the present and shape our future, or what some might call a practice of decolonization. Scholar José Esteban Muñoz describes queer futurity as a “structuring and educated mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present…queerness is essentially about the rejection of a here and now and an insistence on potentiality for another world.”
Conceptually, alternate universe draws from other exhibitions that also explore queer futurity. This show was heavily inspired by Thea Quiray Tagle’s curatorial work with AFTER LIFE (what remains)at the Alice Gallery in Seattle, WA, and AFTER LIFE (we survive) at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, CA, and UCR ARTS at the University of California, Riverside’s traveling exhibition Mundos Alternos: Art and Science Fiction in the Americas. These exhibitions were integral to how I understood queer futurity in the contemporary art world, both aesthetically and thematically. Moreover, these shows exposed me to artists new and old who have responded to the call of imagining queer futures, para sa akin, para atin, para sa lahat. And with that, I cannot claim that the themes in this show are novel or particularly innovative, but are rather an extension and a continuing conversation of what is already here and what is to come.
alternate universe: visualizing queer futurisms places themes of speculative futures, queerness, gender, and survival in conversation with our current world. A juxtaposition of different mediums and focuses, from augmented reality artwork, game design and trans of color theory, to mixed-media and cooperative and anti-capitalist work, alternate universe ultimately engages in the questions:
What are the responses to the current state of our universe, our Earth, our world as queer/queered people? And how do we create and build alternate universes to survive?
Theme #1 – Queer futurity: aesthetics and content in the past, present, and future.
Queer futurity is present in this show not just in the aesthetic nature of new and immersive media, in which where art meets technology, but in the theoretical roots in indigenous sovereignty and anti-capitalism. The works of Camila Tapia-Guilliams and micha cárdenas meet for the first time in this exhibition. Their meeting is not a tiptoe around strangers, nor a barrage of content or wild-flung ideas, but a complementary union in a shared space.
Camila Tapia-Guilliams. All On Borrowed Time, 2021. 9 x 16.5”, acrylic, ink, collage on paper.
Tapia-Guilliams’ All on Borrowed Time (2021) is displayed a few steps away from cárdenas’ Redshift and Portalmetal (2014). Tapia-Guilliams’ work is energized by the multi-coloured lines in the background, reminiscent of Washington, D.C.’s metro lines, overlaid with ominous figures of a hand, heart, and the seeing eye, paralleled by what can be described as mountainous ranges on the top and bottom of the piece. Ambiguous shapes float in between the wavy words, leaving their meaning up for interpretation to the viewer. Here, what is to be grounded is hovering above, reflecting upon the topsy-turvy nature of time itself, where nothing is concrete or given.
cárdenas’ Redshift and Portalmetal is also dynamic in its format as an online game, and in its display on two computers in the rear section of the gallery, with one screen projecting onto the wall. Here, gallery visitors are able to recline onto the leather arm chairs to read and click through cárdenas’ poetic storytelling to be immersed into a world where climate change necessitates traveling outside of the known planet to a new land. Redshift and Portalmetal offers a lens to understand the experience of migration and settlement for a trans woman of color through the story of Roja, whose planet’s environment is failing. cárdenas’ Redshift and Portalmetal gives agency to the viewer, who must choose to survive or to perish, to leave or stay, and what it means to settle in a new world.
Together, Tapia-Guilliams and cárdenas’ pieces speak of the detrimental effects of climate change and the experiences of queer/queered people as they navigate through the present and future of our “new normal.”
“The only way to save our future and give us hope is to organize together around networks of care and resistance to the oppressive structures holding us to our current unsustainable timeline. Time is ticking; we need not turn back but learn from our past and look forward.”
Camila Tapia-Guilliams
Theme #2 – Worldmaking as a practice of community care and survival.
In alternate universes, characters typically find doppelgangers, deviations in time streams, the outcomes of the “what-ifs,” and more. While some alternate universes can be complicated in their mind-boggling physics, others are set in worlds where characters who passed in another universe are now alive, those who were struggling are now happy and fulfilled, outside of tragic plotlines of the fictional canons. Yet, alternate universes are not always completely different from their original worlds: they draw from what is already here.
In this exhibition, alternate universes are collaboratively constructed, from the Critical Realities Studio’s Sin Sol (2020), an augmented reality video game, to Camila Tapia-Guilliams’ mixed media collage series comprised of I Think We Should Change (2021), Take Me Back to Release Me Forward, Open My Eyes So I May Shut Them in Rest (2021), andThere Lies My Tired Eyes, May They Rest in Peace. The Smoke Has Clouded Them, Without Air I Cannot Breathe. The Fire Comes Out My Mouth. (2022).
Critical Realities Studio. Sin Sol / No Sun. Augmented Reality Video Game, 2020. http://www.sinsol.co/
Sin Sol by micha cárdenas, in collaboration with Marcelo Viana Neto, Abraham Avnisan, Kara Stone, Morgan Thomas, Dorothy Santos, Wynne Greenwood, Adrian Phillips, allows users to experience climate change-induced wildfires from a trans Latinx AI hologram named Aura and their dog, Roja. Within the gallery, folks are able to engage with Sin Sol through playing on the iPad app, or viewing the gameplay video. In either instance, Aura speaks to the viewer from fifty years in the future and narrates the effects of environmental collapse.
Collage series by Camila Tapia-Guilliams (left to right): Take Me Back to Release Me Forward, Open My Eyes So I May Shut Them in Rest (2021), 12 x 18”, acrylic, ink, collage on board; There Lies My Tired Eyes, May They Rest in Peace. The Smoke Has Clouded Them, Without Air I Cannot Breathe. The Fire Comes Out My Mouth (2022), 12 x 18”, acrylic, ink, collage on board; I Think We Should Change (2021), 12 x 18”, acrylic, ink, collage on board. Close Up: Camila Tapia-Guilliams. Take Me Back to Release Me Forward, Open My Eyes So I May Shut Them in Rest (2021).
Camila Tapia-Guilliams’ mixed media collage series honors their queer ancestors; acknowledges burnout and the pressures of capitalism on disabled people, LGBTQ+, women, people of color, and the working class; and calls to action what we should change in order to create better futures. Here, the past, present, and future are placed in conversation to see where we have been, where we are, and where we can go forward.
Theme #3 – The power of the word: affirmations, remediations, and articulations that hold us all together.
Throughout this exhibition, the power of words holds Tapia-Guilliams and micha cárdenas together. Both artists embed their own poetry and writing into their visual art practice, from cárdenas’ narration styles in both Redshift & Portalmetal and Sin Sol, to Tapia-Guilliams’ incorporation of poetry into the mixed media elements and within the artist wall labels themselves. cárdenas’ words are deep meditations on surviving climate change disasters, echoing throughout the gallery from the video installation, and then displayed throughout Redshift and Portalmetal. Here, cárdenas draws from the poetry of Black and Latinx feminists whose actions and words have enabled communities to survive.
Similarly, Tapia-Guilliams’ community-centered practice is evident through their incorporation of various theoretical models and inspirations right into their artist statements. With Exposure (2019-2020), Tapia-Guilliams references the work of Martha Fineman to expand upon vulnerability theory, and for There Lies My Tired Eyes, May They Rest in Peace. The Smoke Has Clouded Them, Without Air I Cannot Breathe. The Fire Comes Out My Mouth, Tapia-Guilliams refers viewers who are interested in rest as resistance to Tricia Hersey’s The Nap Ministry. Tapia-Guilliams offers further resources and reading with an invitation to the viewer to also meditate on their own understandings of queerness and queer futurity. Throughout this show, the viewer can clearly hear, read, and see articulations of queer futurity.
Curator’s Reflection
As a student docent for the last four years at the STAMP Gallery, I have had a distinct pleasure to curate this exhibition for a space that I know so intimately. It was a long and arduous process but ultimately seeing how viewers engage with the show in all of its elements has brought me so much joy during 2022’s hardest-hitting moments.
alternate universe has transformed the blank walls of the gallery into a canvas for new media and mixed media art, projection spaces for cárdenas’ augmented reality video game and web-based game, a venue for Tapia-Guilliams’ “Art for Community Care: Collaging Collective Action” event, and a reading nook for visitors to engage with the pop-up library. Furthermore, it holds the potentiality of queer joy at its core.
alternate universe: visualizing queer futurisms has cárdenas’ and Tapia-Guilliams’ words embedded in every corner, colorful projections and collages brightening the white gallery walls, space for students and community members alike to engage with queer dreams of the future, and a call to action for where we can go from here.
This exhibition and programming is supported by the Immersive Media Design Program (imd.umd.edu), The Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies (wgss.umd.edu), University Libraries (lib.umd.edu), STAMP Events (stamp.umd.edu), and the Maryland State Arts Council (msac.org).
For more information on alternate universe: visualizing queer futurisms, visitThe STAMP Gallery.
Yams, tomatoes, Potatoes & Plums from October 25, 2021 to December 11, 2021 at The Stamp Gallery | University of Maryland, College Park | Written by Isabella Chilcoat
While the Yams, Tomatoes, Potatoes, & Plums exhibition in the STAMP Gallery is visually exquisite and captivating, we ought to understand why and how this “genre” arose and the deeper effects of colonization and appropriation. The long history of Australia finds frequent neglect in the American education system, limiting our public’s broader acumen of Australian culture generally, but especially of the communities native to the territory. Because of such limited familiarity, it is easy for our American brains to consume the current works on display only for their “pretty colors” while forgoing a comprehensive appreciation for the artists or the sordid history they endured all to eventually gain notoriety in the mainstream art scene. I should adjust — a mainstream art scene that has traditionally rejected or degraded not just female artists and artists of color, but has also abused indigenous artists by appropriating their culture or denying the artists the credit they are due based on a lack of “formal training” or societal ignorance. It is, therefore, critical that we, as the public encountering Indigenous Australian art, inform ourselves and learn how to interpret works outside of our conventional artistic canon.
Bessie Petyarre, Bush Plum, 2021, Acrylic. 123 x 115 cm. | Naata Nungurrayi, Marrapinti, 2001, Acrylic. 46 x 91 cm
The most helpful place to start is researching directly from the source. Our exhibit features an informative primary source video interview in the first gallery niche on our right side wall with one of the artists, Esther Bruno Nangala. She explains her work, Bush Tomato, its symbols, and, briefly, customs of harvesting and processing of bush tomatoes in her community. She details the importance of the harvest for women with their parts in planting, collecting, and then processing the tomato by grinding it into a paste and rolling the paste into balls for children to eat. Here, we can gather an easily accessible contextual basis for at least one painting in the collection.
Observer, viewing Esther Bruno Nangala’s interview featured in the STAMP Gallery
Moving into some of the broader history of Australian history of Indigenous peoples and Western colonization of the land, the beginnings of colonial activity arose in the late 16th Century. On January 26, 1788 British Captain, Arthur Phillip, landed in Australia simultaneously marking the land’s first foreign settlement and the commencement of an enduring brutal campaign over indigenous peoples and their land for Britain’s territorial growth. The years to follow obliterated native populations through the devastation and dispossession of lands, introduction of diseases, and direct violence. Today only 3.3% of Indigenous people remain in the Australian population.
Some of the greatest problems arise in describing Indigenous artworks when art critics, collectors, curators, and large museums neglect the historical context and fail to attribute the same credit to Indigenous and self-taught artists as “classically trained” Western artists. Certain terminology repeatedly arises in the Western media that degrades the credibility of othered artists (“other “ being non-white, non-Western) — negatively connotated descriptors include words like “untrained,” “primitive,” “tribal,” “primal,” “untainted,” or “pure,” etc. Such a phenomenon arises when people hold the context of the works over the physical form. For instance, when looking at a piece by Leonardo daVinci, arguably the most famous name in Western “classical” art, most people of the general public understand him as a “master” and, accordingly, ascribe importance to his works based on his known history alone – just from seeing his name with a painting. This is not to say that da Vinci’s works are not technically impressive, but there is an automatic, or implicit, bias connected with how much the general public already understands about him.
it is pivotal that we can appreciate their context while analyzing the formal elements by their own merit.
So, when we look at the acrylic paintings on display in the Yams, Tomatoes, Potatoes & Plums exhibit, it is pivotal that we can appreciate their context while analyzing the formal elements by their own merit. Furthermore, the approach to examining the form of an Indigenous artwork or one by a self taught artist – without implicit bias – is to completely abandon anything we know contextually and to compare on the same pedestal the work to any other similar pieces that it inspires. Here, we ensure that the artist receives all the credit she deserves, fairly. That is not to contradict the first half of this essay by any means, though. We need to employ the context to understand or empathize with the work’s meaning, but not when analyzing formal elements against a different work or while forming an initial impression.
Naata Nungurrayi, Bessie Petyarre, and Esther Bruno Nangala’s work is included in Yams, Tomatoes, Potatoes, & Plums at The Stamp Gallery of the University of Maryland, College Park, from October 25, 2021 to December 11, 2021.
For more information on Yams, Tomatoes, Potatoes & Plums and related events, visit The STAMP Gallery.
So you’re walking by the Stamp Gallery one afternoon. Peaking through the glass exterior, you see that there are boxes and packing paper scattered throughout. You see some power tools on the benches, and a ladder leaning against the corner. You notice random walls that seem to be hanging out in limbo in the middle of the space. Walking past the entrance, you find a sign taped to the door: “Closed for installation, please come back for our opening next week!”
Ever wanted to know just what goes into the installation of a gallery exhibition?
The past week at the Stamp Gallery has been quite a busy one, with the installation of our current exhibition featuring new arrivals for the Contemporary Art Purchasing Program (CAPP). As a docent, I get to take part in this installation process. As such, I thought I’d offer a little glimpse into a few of the more subtle, never-occurred-to-me-before-I-started-working-here types of things that go on behind the scenes of an installation.
Vinyl
When you first walk into the Stamp Gallery and start reading about what the exhibit is about, you are reading the vinyl. I’d like to start off by admitting that, before I started working at the gallery, I was under the impression that someone had to come and actually hand-paint the words onto the wall…which I’m glad is not the case! After the exhibition overview is typed up in a Word doc, it is sent to be blown up in size and then printed out on a kind of sticker-like paper. Before sticking this onto the wall, we measure the length/width of the sheet, take a ruler to the wall, level it, and make light pencil marks for guidelines. Next, we peel off the outer layer of the sheet, which uncovers the sticky part that goes onto the wall. Once we have the sheet up on the wall, we smooth out any wrinkles and press it against the wall as much as possible – this makes it easier to peel the paper off without peeling the actual letters off as well. The final step is to do the actual peeling!
Walls
In the gallery, we have“moveable” walls that are stored in the back. The wall holding Titus Kaphar’s The Jerome Project (Asphalt and Chalk) XII is a moveable wall.
These walls allow us the mobility to create new, smaller spaces within our existing gallery space. They also provide extra surface area to accommodate more pieces, draw attention to particular works, as well as provide general interest and variability to the eye. For this exhibition in particular, we added a wall behind the podium holding Wafaa Bilal’s Perseus Beheading Medusa and Pink David in order to direct focus onto the pieces, since they are relatively small objects in comparison to the space.
Lighting
Tracks along the ceiling of the gallery provide grooves that the lights hook into. There are three tracks spanning the length of the space, and five tracks running widthwise. The lights themselves consist of a bulb attached to a frame that can be maneuvered to adjust the angle of the light accordingly. In addition, there are metal bars within the hook of the frame that conduct electricity and make the light turn on when attached to the track. Depending on the needs of the exhibition/pieces, the lights can be placed so that they either “spotlight” or provide a softer, glow to the work. When spotlighting, the lights are generally placed closer to the piece, which provides a very direct focus. Setting the light farther back creates more of an atmosphere and harmonization for the piece as well as the space surrounding it. Other things to keep in mind when setting up lights is reflection, shadows, and the color casted by the bulb. For the pieces that contain a glass covering, we had to consider the effects of possible reflections caused by our lighting choices. In addition, we can control the degree and location of shadows by light placement. For Ellington Robinson’s Oath of the Imperialists, we played around with the distance of the lights from the work in order to “shift” the shadows around.
Finally, some bulbs are older than others and cast a softer, more yellow hue than the newer ones, which typically cast a very bright, verging on greenish tint. We usually try to match the shades of light throughout the exhibit.
Of course, there are many other aspects that go into a gallery installation that I haven’t mentioned here – each show is unique in terms of the methods used to bring it together. For a closer look at the results of our installation, be sure to check out the opening reception of CAPP New Arrivals 2015 this Friday, September 25th between 6-10pm.
See you there!
Carmen Dodl
A Contemporary Art Dedicated Space at the University of Maryland
