CHANGELINGS
Curated by Carl E. Hazlewood
on view: September 23 through November 12, 2006
Opening reception: Saturday, September 23, 4–7pm
Artists in the exhibition will show work in various media, encompassing performance, photography, sculpture and small installation. They are: Derrick Adams, Lennon Jno-Baptiste, JeeHui Chang, Cynthia Edorh, HeeSee Kim, C. Duane Lee, Tyeakia Miles, SanBin Park, Eddy Steinhauer.
According to FiveMyles guest curator, Carl E. Hazlewood, “almost all those included in CHANGELINGS, have, of necessity, moved about the world, exchanging one way of life for another. So they understand the effects of transformation, and subtle states of adjustment in artistic form, as in life. They constantly straddle the wavering edge between here and there, this and that. Each artist negotiates the periphery of limitation and possibility, of form and experience, in ways only they can.”
By means of his performances, constructions, and videos, Derrick Adams allows us entree into a beguiling but obsessive realm of innocence and fantasy. One joins him in the disturbing world of a precocious child seemingly lost in a fairy-tale; there’s an unnerving sense of danger... and desire. This is a glimpse of a private imagination at work, ineffably sensual and surprisingly familiar. In wonder we gradually recognize the alternate terrain; it is one from which we long ago escaped in order to emerge whole and adult, but without that magic, into the world.
Lennon Jno-Baptiste says “I use, iconic images of the past centuries, contemporary objects, and my own signs. I am exploring new symbols and new myths.” The formal accretion, translation and organization of Jno-Baptiste’s images and social signifiers into something new can be understood when one remembers that in the Caribbean, one survived in body, spirit, and culturally, via subterfuge and the syncretic welding of experience and multiple histories. Mr. Jno-Baptiste, a New Yorker originally from the island of Nevis, in the West Indies, totally understands how that problematized history and the cultural and physical body can be transformed and manipulated.
JeeHui Chang’s bright installations are constructed in opposition to the world as it is, its apparent darkness. Her work, light and fresh, symbolically resists the raging emotional wars of the modern street and home, as well as the blood-wars we follow on TV each night. Recently, the darkness drew intimately close, drifting silently into our houses as white ash, accompanied by an acrid stench that stuck forever in our noses and throats. But JeeHui’s colorful costumes, and her peppermint candy, are soothing sweet gifts to visitors of her installations; and her quick smile and anime-pixie energy is a temporary, always futile antidote to stave off the ever-encroaching darkness.
Using a cheap unobtrusive Kodak digital camera, C. Duane Lee takes remarkable snapshots of kids on the edge; they hover at a moment of perfect beauty, and high vulnerability. These small photographs from the Deep South, document boys, many of who are emotionally on their own even while living at home. At once knowing, yet innocent, these young people are preternaturally aware from an early age of how the world works. And as true ‘changelings’ of a sort, they find alternative means of creating family, and often discover only in each other the nurturing love all children need to survive.
Carl E. Hazlewood is an artist and writer, and co-founder of Aljira, A Center for Contemporary Art, in Newark, NJ. He has organized numerous exhibitions including the US prize-winning representation at the Bienal Internacional de Pintura, Cuenca, Ecuador 1994, and ‘Modern Life’with Okwui Enwezor, for Aljira. His writing has appeared in ‘Flash Art’, ‘Art Paper’ and many other publications.
acknowledgments:
This exhibition is generously supported by The Greenwall Foundation.
DIRECTIONS:
Take 2, 3, or 4 trains to Franklin Avenue. Walk two blocks against the traffic on Franklin. Walk ¾ block to 558 St. Johns Place. FiveMyles is within easy walking distance from the Brooklyn Museum.