Clay Dunklin

Song of the Wild

October 4 – 27, 2019

“Before something happens in the realm of calmness, we do not feel the calmness; only when something happens within it do we find the calmness.” —Zen mind, Beginner’s Mind

Song of the Wild is a self-portrait video installation that responds to notions of the body, consciousness, and performance. Like the sun, the work bathes visitors in warm yellow as the viewer is invited to sit on one of the provided cushions and reflect on the space of your body. As the body negotiates the space between the world and the self, so it marks, alters, and changes surfaces. The records of these changing surfaces and gestural marks in space serve to preserve a kind of body talk or resonating chatter. The viewer is encouraged to feel this resonance as subtle vibrations through the body as they observe new visual stimuli.
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Clay Dunklin is an interdisciplinary artist whose experimental practice includes performative, video, and installation works. Dunklin has exhibited his work nationally including shows at the Orlando Science Center, The American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center, and the Delaware Contemporary. He received his BFA in drawing from the University of Central Florida and his MFA from the University of Maryland College Park. Dunklin is currently an NTT Assistant Professor of Art at Western Oregon University.

claydunklin.com

Secular Relics and Apocryphal Fossils

September 6 – 29, 2019

Using a cabinet of curiosity format, Zofie King reflects on how both geological and cultural objects connect us to history. Fossils serve as a record of geological time, in which humans are a mere blip, while reliquaries encapsulate myths that go back several centuries. The origin of relics is often dubious, and their provenance hard to track. In fact, a reliquary is venerated for what it is thought to contain, and its real value lies in the story that surrounds the object. Similarly, fossils hold our fascination by telling us about the history of life before humans. Studied extensively, they are put into context using the scientific method, but in holding a fossil, one is also physically connected to a prehistoric time.

King has created her own “fossils” using antique holiday molds, which celebrate pagan holidays that have been claimed by religion, and mixed them with objects that reference both religion and contemporary issues. Playing with ideas about objects as evidence, King invites the viewer to think critically about these objects in a time of post-truth.

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Born in Poland and raised in Germany, Zofie King immigrated to the United States in 1998. After graduating with a psychology degree in 2002, she studied interdisciplinary craft at Towson University. For six years she worked in interior design while taking classes at MICA and the Corcoran, and devoted herself to her studio art practice in 2012. Currently, King is a sculptor working primarily with found objects, both conceptually and visually. She has had solo shows at the NVCC Margaret W. Fisher Art Gallery, DC Arts Center, Mount St. Mary’s University Gallery, and her work has been included in numerous group shows. King was part of the Sparkplug Collective from 2017- 2019 and is currently a member of the Washington Sculptor’s Group.

zofieking.com

Dreaming While Woke: Speak of the Future in the Now

September 6 – 29, 2019

Sharing a common thread of exploration, mixed media artist Jamilla Okubo and fashion designer and visual artist Lou Dawson, both native to Washington, DC, come together to present Dreaming While Woke: Speak of the Future in the Now. Inspired by Afrofuturist pioneers such as Octavia Butler and Sun Ra, this exhibition consists of works that are a conversation between the two artists on their experiences growing up in Washington, DC, while reimagining nostalgic cultural places as safe spaces for the black community.

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Jamilla Okubo is a mixed-media artist living and working in Washington, DC. Her work has consistent themes that explore the intricacy of belonging to an American, Kenyan, and Trinidadian identity. She aims to use her interdisciplinary concentration as a medium to address topics within her culture. Rotating between collage, painting, fashion design, and screen printing her work is heavily inspired by the art of storytelling. Okubo’s most recent accomplishments include collaborating with Christian Dior and Gorman, as well as creating live art installations for Culture Corp x Hudson Yards and the Line Hotel DC. Her work has been exhibited at The Torpedo Factory, Milk Gallery, Calabar Gallery, Weeksville Heritage Center, and the Dray Walk Gallery.

www.jamillaokubo.co

Lou Dawson is a self-taught, mixed media and textile artist, born and raised in Northeast Washington, DC. Dawson uses her experiences growing up in black communities to inform her latest collection, Huemanz, a clever play on the outdated phrase “Colored people.” Her biggest piece to date, Polaroid, is a unique approach to color blocking outlined in black and white. Dawson’s fashion pieces can be seen on several fashion and art influencers and she has shown collections in New York Fashion Week.

zairef.bigcartel.com

Kuen-Lin Tsai

Tai-Chun Chou

Yun-Ting Hung

Don Don Houmwm

Starting from the Island: Contemporary Art from Taiwan

August 2 – September 29, 2019

Curated by Yan-Huei Chen, Art Bank Taiwan

Featuring Yun-Ting Hun, Kuen-Lin Tsai, Tai-Chun Chou, and Don Don Houmwm

“Starting from an island, we move; as we do, we live and understand the world.”

The island is the hometown where we were born, the place where we live, and the starting point of our mobility. The qualities of an island evolve with time: it is no longer an area bordered by the ocean, since its people now have the ability to reach out frequently and rapidly, by way of modern transportation and online networks, to new territories—whether physical or virtual—gathering a large, ever-changing wealth of environmental experiences and information. In the modern world, life experiences are no longer tied to a single place, but rather unfold at an intersection of diverse places, peoples, and technologies. Against this context, Yun-Ting Hun, Kuen-Lin Tsai, Tai-Chun Chou, and Don Don Houmwm have discovered new ways of probing their environment—and comparing/contrasting its social phenomena—all starting from the island. They make artworks as statements of how much they value where they are, and as responses to where they are.

Starting from the Island offers an illuminating encounter with four Taiwan artists who have learned to connect their multi-local life experiences and environmental observations within a fast-changing contemporary environment of information overload. As they compare and contrast local with global, insularity with overseas, and cities with mountains—and as their discussions stretch from where they live to the ubiquitous modern phenomena that touch all societies throughout the world—they frame a remarkable conversation with their external environment and with all viewers who are open to extraordinary works of art.

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Yun-Ting Hung lives and works in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. She received her MFA in 2016 from the National Taiwan University of Arts, then continued her studies at the Meisterstudium at Kunsthochschule für Bildenden Künste in Dresden. Among her extensive international exhibitions, the most notable include f(r)iction in between at Spinnerei Werkschauhalle, Leipzig; Digital OSMOSIS PL 2017 at R+ Gallery and 13 Muz Gallery in Szczcine, Poland; Do/ Through/ Measure at Crane Gallery, Kaohsiung, Taiwan; Fast and Furious at Halle am Wasser, Berlin, Germany; and International Exhibition of Contemporary Art, Ostrale 09, Dresden. In 2009, she received the Public Award, Ostrale 09, and was also awarded the Freeman Foundation Asian Artist’s Fellowship. Since 2011, Hung has served as an artistic director and curator at tamtamART Art Association in Berlin. She currently works as an assistant professor at the Department of Fine Arts at Chang Jung Christian University in Tainan, Taiwan; as the main convener of OSMOSIS Audiovisual Media Festival in Taipei; and as artistic director of tamtamART TAIWAN Art Association in Kaohsiung.

www.yuntinghung.com

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Born in Tainan in 1979, Kuen-Lin Tsai graduated from the MFA Program in New Media Art at the Department of New Media Art of the Taipei National University of the Arts. He earned his BFA at the Department of Fine Arts of the National Taiwan University of the Arts, after attending Fu-Hsin Trade and Arts School. He currently works in Taipei. Solo exhibitions include The Invisible Sound at Liang Gallery in Taipei in 2016; Treesure House at Waterloo Arts in Cleveland in 2015; As We Hear/Say, organized by the Taishin Bank Foundation for Arts and Culture in 2015; Transformation of Experience at 789 Chicken Farm in Taoyuan in 2013; and Sound Home at Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts in 2011. The artist has also participated in various group shows at Soka Art Center, Very Fun Park, VT Art salon, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, National Art Museum of China, Mori Art Museum, and Artist Rashid Chowdhuri Art Gallery.

tsaikuenlin.com

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Don Don Houmwm comes from the Mugumuyu community, and his artwork is multi-media in that it includes performance, acting, and recording installations. He also has expertise in the instruments and composition of indigenous music. His work explores such themes as survival in a changing environment, hard and tender genes, and the skillful demonstration of indigenous people’s aptitude for music and performance. By crossing genders, and mixing multiple generations’ perspectives, he tells contemporary stories of change within the cultures of indigenous peoples. Don Don Houmwm received Pulima Arts Awards in 2016, 2014, and 2012, and has participated in exhibitions in Taiwan and Japan.

Truku Singer-Songwriter | Dondon Houmwm

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Born in Hsinchu, Taiwan, in 1986, Tai-Chun Chou received his MFA with a specialization in painting, from the Taipei National University of the Arts in 2012. His works have been honored by the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts’ Kaohsiung Awards and by the Made in Taiwan program at the 2012 Art Taipei. In 2010, he held the solo exhibition Rear Area at VT Artsalon.

Liang Gallery: Tai-Chun Chou

In Light Of—

August 2 – September 1, 2019

In Light Of— questions notions of time, presence, and healing by bringing into focus the fleeting patterns of light and cracks that often only flicker in our peripheral vision. Considering these mundane ephemeral moments with attention and care, they become thresholds of possibility. Photographs and on-site castings translated into books, poetry, and sculpture, give material form to what is usually transient and intangible, inhabiting a gap between passing and dwelling, between a reflection of what is and a proposal of what could be.

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Emily Fussner (b. 1991, Indonesia) is a multidisciplinary artist who works siteresponsively, approaching overlooked spaces to explore questions of fragility and care, transience and presence. Based in Northern Virginia, she holds a BS in Printmaking from Indiana Wesleyan University and recently completed her MFA in Visual Arts from George Mason University. Fussner participated in American University’s MFA Studio Berlin summer residency program, and was awarded a 2018- 2019 Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Graduate Fellowship. She has worked for the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery in Washington, DC, and for Fenwick Gallery at Mason. She has had solo exhibitions in the Gillespie Gallery at Mason and in the Workhouse Arts Center Art Lab, and exhibited in group shows regionally and internationally.

www.emilyfussner.com