Uprooted

Uprooted

September 7 – September 30, 2018

Uprooted is an all-media, juried exhibition that examines the concept of “home” and the after effects of leaving one’s home behind. This exhibition was juried by Adriel Luis, Curator of Digital and Emerging Media at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. Selected artists include Jenny Balisle (CA), Mills Brown (DC), Kay Gordon (NY), Niloufar Kazemzadeh (MD), Jessica Lancaster (NY), Katie Latona (NJ), Jillian MacMaster (MD), Mi-Hee Nahm (TX), Bundith Phunsombatlert (NY), Judith Pratt (VA), Ann Stoddard (MD), Paul Sue-pat (NY), and Stacy Isenbarger (ID).

The Joan Dare Gallery

September 7 – September 30, 2018

Joan, a Senators wife, recently and enthusiastically arrived in Washington D.C. from her homestead in rural Kansas. As the privileged, albeit sheltered, and latest alter ego of Jenna North, Joan spends her days on self-expression through her passion for Broadway musicals, tap dancing, and her love of cultural arts. She’s building a network of socialites to attend her tea parties intended to elevate the importance of small talk, with an emphasis on the weather. She is in the process of working through her business plan to open “The Joan Dare Gallery”, which will represent regional emerging artists. Although she is interested in cultural activities and artistic expression, she prefers to ignore the darker side of humanity, and avoids the news. However, the plight of the immigrant children being separated from their families at the U.S. border has touched home with her since she’s developed a recent obsession with the idea of having a child of her own. Might she adopt a poor immigrant child, engulf on the technological advances in fertility treatments, or will she be impregnated by Immaculate Conception?

MicroMonuments II: Underground

Ursula Achternkamp, Alan Binstock, Janet Brome, Marc Fromm, Judith Goodman, Caroline Hatfield, Linda Hesh, Simon Horn, Margit Jäschke, Michael Krenz, Esther Eunjin Lee, Jacqueline Maggi, Georg Mann, Joan Mayfield, Nina Viktoria Naussed, Sara Parent-Ramos, Alim Pasht-Han, Kristina Penhoet, Judith Pratt, Diane Szczepaniak, Marilyn and Gil Ugiansky, Steve Wanna, and Janet Wittenberg.

September 7 – October 28, 2018

MicroMonuments II: Underground brings together 23 artists from diverse cultural backgrounds to focus a contemporary lens on ideas and concepts that humanity has grappled with for centuries. Reflecting on the ring sanctuary of Pömmelte, often referred to as the German ‘Stonehenge,’ the exhibiting artists investigate deep time and explore the idea of what is hidden below ground, as well as what will be rediscovered, unearthed, and revealed.

This exhibition aims to reveal a deeper understanding of people’s lives throughout history and to allow contemporary artists to express their interpretations on topics of the cosmos, nature, current culture, and world heritage. Using the Nebra Sky Disc as a reference point—an artifact found near Pömmelte depicting a Bronze Age creator’s vision of the cosmos—the selected artworks are no larger than the Disc’s diameter of 12.6 inches. These archeological discoveries are evocative touchstones that invite contemplation of enduring questions about our history and place in the world. Can reflecting upon the past help broaden our understanding of ourselves and our relationship to one another? Can rethinking how we study and understand the past give us insight into navigating the future? These are some of the questions examined by 15 Washington, DC, artists along with 8 German artists, bringing global perspectives to shared human experiences.

The theme for this exhibition came from the vision of our coordinating curator, Artemis Herber, who, with the assistance of her German counterpart, Dr. Ines Janet Engelmann, invited the 8 German artists to take part in this trans-Atlantic project. A call for entries was organized by the Washington Sculptors Group for the selection of the Washington-area artists, with independent curator Laura Roulet serving as the juror.

Under Another Roof

Marina Buening, Kristien De Neve, Anita Guerra, Maria Korporal

August 3 – September 2, 2018

Under Another Roof is an exhibition based on the site-specific installation,
Under the Same Roof presented at the gallery Sala 1 in Rome, Italy in May
2018. Four artists born in four different countries—Buening (Germany), De Neve (Belgium), Guerra (Cuba), and Korporal (The Netherlands)—
choose to focus on the desire and need for a harmonious coexistence, while dealing with the difficulties and the fears of this endeavor.

In Rome, they constructed a common building, octagonal in shape, with four
entrances and four walls, as a visual metaphor of cohabitation. Each of
the vertical walls showed how each artist connects earth with heaven through a personal visual vocabulary and message. In Washington DC, the work of the four artists once again shares the same sky and the same ground, under a new roof of the Hillyer galleries while the four walls are differentiated by the traces of
each individual’s visual language.

On each of the four walls, the observer can now find some traces of the former site-specific installation, re-elaborated for Hillyer in a more synthetic version, without any premeditated or direct interaction between them. In each of the artist’s works there is a clear invitation towards self-investigation as a condition for living more harmoniously with other people and with our environment in its broadest sense.

www.marinabuening-art.com
www.kristiendeneve.com
www.anitaguerra.com
www.mariakorporal.com

Tender Bits

August 3 – September 2, 2018

Tender Bits is dedicated to those sweet, gritty places, tender thoughts and desires; it calls attention to our bodies and their dubious relationship to both cultural identity and intimacy. What languages and tools do we have to describe and access that intimacy in our bodies and in our cultures? Tender Bits is endearing and uncomfortable, soft and sarcastic, tender and trying.

Delafkaran uses her experience as a queer, Iranian-American woman as a
vehicle for expressing these ideas, as well as her research in the sociopolitical
tension and history that now frames that experience. The show explores the relationship between cultural practices, desire, and utility. The installation
embraces the humor and awkwardness that conversations around intimacy
provoke, and poses questions about the vulnerability and repercussions inherent
to related practices.

Employing Persian motifs, craft, industrial hardware and performance, Tender Bits further accesses aesthetics of repetition, eroticization, and failure congruently in order to explore the multiplicity of bodily experiences and their dynamic relationship to language.

Rex (Alexandra) Delafkaran is an interdisciplinary artist from San Francisco,
California. After earning her BFA in Sculpture and Performance Art from the
San Francisco Art Institute, she relocated to Washington, DC working in local
galleries. She performs and exhibits her work along the East Coast, working out of Red Dirt Studios, and on curatorial projects of her own.

www.rexdelafkaran.com