empire
Jaishri Abichandani - Hacksworth Ashley - Daniel Bejar - Brendan Fernandes - Pooneh Maghazehe - Yeni Mao -
Wardell Milan - Aime Mpane - GlexisNovoa -
Roberto Visani - Shoshanna Weinberger
Curated by Natika Soward
on view: May 5 – June 9, 2013
Opening Reception: sunday, May 5, 2013, 5-8pm
Fivemyles is pleased to present Empire, a group exhibition that brings together eleven contemporary artists whose works address themes of conquest through ethnic conflict, landscape, exploitation of the body, commercialization and a re-contextualization of the iconic. Works on view critically assimilate irreverence, inversion, parody, sacrilege and insult as subversive anti-colonialist strategies. The exhibition includes artists Jaishri Abichandani, Hacksworth Ashley, Daniel Bejar, Brendan Fernandes, Pooneh Maghazehe, Yeni Mao, Wardell Milan, Aime Mpane, GlexisNovoa, Roberto Visani and Shoshanna Weinberger.
In photo based works, Wardell Milan and Yeni Mao reimagine the mythical landscape of conquered lands as multi-layered enviroments of complex mystery and personhood. Milan conflates time and place with a dizzying array of signs, symbols and characters in his dioramas, while Mao collages black and white transparencies of lush vegetation to speak to the construction of memories and untouched lands. Hacksworth Ashley and Daniel Bejar extend our understanding of landscape approaching the subject as both artists and documentarians. Ashley, in his dreamlike video Haiti, uses a first person account by a Hatian woman to describe interactions with newcomers during the recent post earthquake crisis, while Behar exacts the midpoint between the US and Puerto Rico in 22° 11.517’ N, 73° 34.328’ W (Neither Here Nor There). He describes the project as “an allegory - the halfway point is a symbol for Puerto Rico's current political status as an unincorporated territory of the United States, as well as my own multi-cultural experience.”
The human body as both subject and territory is depicted in the work of Aime Mpane, Shoshanna Weinberger and Jaishri Abichandani. Mpane rough cuts and paints small wooden portraits which reflect the post-colonial violence and vitality of his native Congo. Both Weinberger andAbichandani address the aesthetics and subjectivity of the female body. Weinberger, in Bucket of Blood, a large scale work on paper, converts the delicate eroticism of Botticelli's The Birth of Venus into a large bulbous black form wrapped in gold chain and dripping blood. Abichandani’sdrawing, Prisoner of my Womb, made of bull whips and nails,references flagellation, slavery, religion and sexual fetish. The work spells out the Hindu character for sadfdsaf, and is particularly poignant given the grotesque violence perpetrated against women throughout the world today.
Language as a weapon of oppression and empowerment is also seen in the work of Brendan Fernandes, Glexis Novoa, Pooneh Maghazehe, and Roberto Visani. Fernandes uses both spoken and written language to question ideas of hierarchy and venacular. In his video work Devil's Tongue and an installation of poems as books as sculptural objects, the artist .... Maghazehe's addresses language by deconstructing furniture into “asdfasdf”. Novoa's site specific drawing installation uses constructivist visual language used in Soviet era architecture and graphic design to question utopian notions of progress and equality. Visani's hybrid weapons recreate the familiar icon of the gun using the improvisatory language of recycled cast-offs found throughout the developing world. His sculpture, Nigmatic Cross, conflates the form of a rifle with a cross to refer to the interrelationship of colonialism and religion.
about the artists:
Born in Bombay, India, Jaishri Abichandani received her MFA from Goldsmiths College, University of London. She has continued to intertwine art and activism in her career, founding the South Asian Women’s Creative Collective,http://www.sawcc.org, in New York and London. Abichandani has exhibited her work internationally at various venues including P.S.1/MOMA, the Queens Museum of Art, the 798 Beijing Biennial and the Guangzhou Triennial in China, Nature Morte, & Gallery Chemould in India, the IVAM in Valencia, Spain. Her work is included in various international collections including the Burger Collection, the Florian Peters Messers Collection and the Saatchi Collection.
Philip H. Ashley lives and works in New York, NY. Ashley’s work utilizes a re-constitution of found imagery and objects as well as creating complex and entirely new multilayered compositions from both new medias and more traditional fine art practices, including video, photography, painting, sculpture, sound, collage and installation. Hinging itself on a certain unity in a disparate-ness of technique, concept, and implementation - his work refuses simple categorization and is founded intently on its connection to the real world. Ashley is interested in the principles of social realism embodied in a contemporary visual vernacular.
Daniel Bejar is an interdisciplinary artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York. Bejar is currently a 2012-13 Blade of Grass, NY Fellow, and recently completed the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Artist-in-Residence Workspace Program. In 2011 Bejar was selected to Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY Hot Picks program. Bejar’s work has been exhibited internationally, with recent venues including El Museo Del Barrio, NY sixth Bienal The (S) Files Bienal 2011; SITE Santa Fe, NM; University of New Haven, CT; Artnews Projects, Berlin, Germany; and Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY.
Yoko Inoue is a multi-disciplinary artist Originally from Kyoto,Japan. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, teaches at Bennington College in Vermont. Inoue earned an MFA from Hunter College. Her work has been shown at Brooklyn Museum, Sculpture Center, Rubin Museum, Momenta Art and Art inGeneral in New York and at other international and national venues. She has received Guggenheim Fellowship,The Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, NYFA Fellowship in Sculpture and CrossDisciplinary/ Performative Work, Tides Foundation Lambent Fellowship, Jerome Foundation Travel and StudyGrant, Franklin Furnace Fund, and other grants. Most recently she received theAnonymous Was A Woman Award. Residencies include Skowhegan, LMCC Workspace, Smack Mellon, .ekwc (European Ceramic Work Center) in The Netherlands, Civitella Ranieri in Italy and Sacatar Foundation in Brazil. Inoue was awarded the LMCC Paris Residency from the Mayor’s Office of City of Paris at CitéInternationale des Arts in 2012.
Born in Kenya of Indian descent, Brendan Fernandes immigrated to Canada in 1989. He completed the Independent Study Program of the Whitney Museum of American Art (2007) and earned his MFA (2005) from The University of Western Ontario and his BFA (2002) from York University in Canada. He has exhibited internationally and nationally including exhibitions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Art and Design New York, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, The National Gallery of Canada, The Art Gallery of Hamilton, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Mass MoCA, The Andy Warhol Museum, the Art Gallery of York University, Deutsche Guggenheim, The Bergen Kunsthall , Manif d’Art: The Quebec City Biennial, The Third Guangzhou Triennial and the Western New York Biennial through The Albright-Knox Art Gallery. His work is represented by Diaz Contemporary, Toronto www.diazcontemporary.ca
Pooneh Maghazehe was born in Brooklyn and raised in Levittown, Pennsylvania. Select exhibitions include the Beijing 798 Biennale, the Chelsea Art Museum, DePaul University Museum in Chicago, and Asian Contemporary Art Week, and ZKM Institute for Art and Media, ICA Philadelphia and most recently 247365. Select publications include The New York Times, Art Asia Pacific Magazine, Art Map Magazine, Contemporary Practices, Guernica Magazine, 1 Magazine,and Adbusters.
Yeni Mao was born in Canada and studied at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago. Exhibitions include Collette Blanchard Gallery, Mills Gallery in Boston, University of Maryland, Andrew Edlin Gallery, Rush Arts, Aljira Center for Contemporary Art, ROM for kunst og arkitektur, and the Shang Element Contemporary Art Museum. Mao’s work has been written about in The New York Times, Time Out New York, The Advocate, The Village Voice, and the Bangkok Post. Currently, Mao is Artist in Residence at OAZO-AIR in Amsterdam, and this summer will present a solo project at Flashe Atöyle in Izmir, Turkey
Wardell Milan lives and works in New York. He received a MFA from Yale in 2004 and University Tennessee, Knoxville, TN B.F.A., Photography and Painting, December 2001. He has had solo shows at The Studio Museum of Harlem, New York; Taxter and Spengemann, New York; Annurama 404, Naples, Italy; Louis B. James Gallery, New York, NY and Clough-Hanson Gallery, Rhodes College, Memphis,Tennessee. His work has been included in group exhibitions at MoMA PS1, New York; The Bronx Museum of The Arts, Bronx, NY; Institute of Contemporary Art ,Philadelphia, PA; Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA; White Columns, New York; the Museum of the African Diaspora, San Francisco; the National Gallery of Art, Warsaw; and others. Milan will be featured in the upcoming Vitamin D2: New Perspectives in Drawing, Phaidon Press, 2013.
Aimé Mpané was born 1968 in Kinshasa, DR Congo. He graduated from the Academie des Beaux-Arts, Kinshasa in 1990 and obtained advance degree at the Ecole National Superieure des Art Visuels de La Cambre, Brussels, Belgium in 2000. He has shown internationally at the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, Museum fur Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Dortmund,Germany, Liverpool Biennial, England, 2010, GlazenhuisAmstelpark, Amsterdam, Station Museum, Houston, TX, Musee de Katanga, Lubumbashi, DR Congo. Mpané works are in the collections at the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY and the Phillips Collection, Washington DC. Awards include 2006 Prix de la Fondation Jean-Paul Blachère, Dak’Art Bienniale, Dakar, Senegal and the 2012 Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Award. Mpané will be included in Shaping Power: Luba Masterworks from the Royal Museum for Central Africa, at LACMA, Los Angeles, July 7, 2013–January 5, 2014.
Glexis Novoa was born in Holguín, Cuba in 1964, raised in Havana and received a BA from The National School of Art, Havana in 1984. Since 1987 his work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. He has had solo presentations at Cheekwood Museum, Nashville, Tennessee; Lowe Museum, Coral Gables, Florida; ’Worcester, Worcester Art Museum,Worcester, Massachusetts; Locust Project Miami Miami, Florida; Miami Miami Art Museum, Miami, Florida; The Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana; Espacio Aglutinador, Havana, Cuba; Castillo de la Real Fuerza, MuseoNacional de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba and Galería Habana, Havana, Cuba, among many other venues. Novoa’s work is featured in numerous private collections, international museums and in public places. He lives in Vedado, Havana and Little Haiti, Miami and works anywhere.
Roberto Visani is a multi-media artist residing in Brooklyn, New York. He received a B.F.A. degree in fine arts from Mankato State University in Minnesota in 1994 and an M.F.A. degree in studio art from the University of Michigan in 1997. He has exhibited his work internationally in such venues as the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY, The Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, The Bronx Museum of Art, NY, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SF, CA, The Contemporary Arts Center, Cleveland, OH, Barbican Galleries, London, UK, and the Ghana National Museum, Accra, Ghana. He is a former Fulbright fellow to Ghana and NYFA Artist Fellow in Sculpture. His works have been reviewed in such publications as the New York Times, ArtForum, Art News, and Frieze.
Shoshanna Weinberger was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1973 to a Jamaican-mother and American-father, Shoshanna was raised in Montclair, NJ. She currently lives and works in Newark, NJ. Her work has shown for the past decade nationally and internationally featured in group shows: The New Authentics (Spertus Museum, Chicago, IL) ; New American Talent 18 (The Jones Center for Contemporary Art, Austin, TX); Acts of Alterity (Nomad Gallery, Brussels, Belgium) to name a few. Solo shows include: What Makes My Hottentot So Hot (Solos Project House, Newark, NJ, 2012) & Sometimes All of Me is Not Enough (Carol Jazzar Contemporary Art, Miami, 2012). She has also been featured in the National Gallery of Jamaica, 2012 Biennial, Kingston. Her work has been acquired by public collections: The Sagamore Collection, Miami; Girls Club Collection, Ft. Lauderdale and The Margulies Collection, Miami. Weinberger holds a BFA degree from The School of the Institute of Art in Chicago, 1995; and received a MFA from Yale School of Art, Yale University, 2003.
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.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
FiveMyles is in part supported by the New York State Council for the Arts, Public Funds from the New York City Dept. of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Council Member Laurie Cumbo, the Greenwich Collection, The Jacques and Natasha Gelman Foundation, the Lily Auchincloss Foundation, the Shelley and Donald Rubin Foundation, and Humanities NY.