I am happy to share the recording of the artist panel I participated this week.
Our exhibition at Mapspace, Port Chester, runs till the end of this weekend.
"A Pot Nudged Into Oblivion" is an Ice Cream Social exhibition hosted at MAPSpace in Port Chester, NY, on view October 7 - November 11. In this artist panel, the artists in the show discuss their individual practices and the mingled themes of protection, preservation, fear, and cautionary beacons in their work.
About the exhibition: A Pot Nudged Into Oblivion
"...So many of us are breathless,
you know, like me
kneeling to collect the pottery shards
of a house plant my elbow has nudged
into oblivion. What if I sigh,
and the black earth beneath me scatters
like insects running from my breath?
Am I a god then? Am I insane
because I worry about the disassembling of earth
regularly? I walk more softly now..."
- Jamaal May, Respiration
In this exhibition, eight artists handle modes of fear and fragility while either upholding or peeling away facades of fortitude. Mechanisms of warning are scratched, punched, scrawled, and lovingly arranged. Knee-jerk reactions and masterful plans share the room, mocking one another's attempts. To fear loss is to document, sear into memory, to reincarnate. Certain terrors set familiar triggers into action — a cycle ensues. It gets into the bloodline, passing from one young buck to the next. What if inside this cycle exists a fractal pattern of ferociously-protective enfolding around those slightly more scared? Hundred-year-old tree rings huddled to one another, curve after curve. To name an amorphous fear sets its edges apart from all else, making it small against the world. There are some rules of engagement: you may lay like settled snow if at the feet of a brown bear, but a black bear will require your most monstrous form.
𝘼 𝙋𝙤𝙩 𝙉𝙪𝙙𝙜𝙚𝙙 𝙄𝙣𝙩𝙤 𝙊𝙗𝙡𝙞𝙫𝙞𝙤𝙣 features work by Annika Earley, Shabnam Jannesari, Elena Kalkova, Zahra Pars, Meriel Pitarka, Cynthia Reynolds, Hannah Rothbard, and Jen Schoonmaker, curated by Jenn Cacciola