My work attempts to piece together a collective portrait using the surplus, latent value of secondhand photographic material, mostly from Google Maps, but also from Youtube, Craigslist, and offline sources. For me, the value of this type of imagery is in its candor: we, and our world of things, are captured from an oblique or […]
Through a process of decontextualization, appropriation, and reconstruction, I transform found objects and low-cost commodities into visual lexicons that are inspired by my Chinese heritage. I organize these lexicons with a system that is inspired by my background in choreography. The result is a sculptural language that creates a dream-like world where momentary events are […]
As an interdisciplinary artist, Michael Arcega works across media to create art that is informed by language, history, and geography. In his most recent work he has adopted methodologies used in the anthropological study of world cultures that often emphasize “otherness,” but Arcega turns the tables, positioning North America as ‘the other” whose symbols and […]
Miguel Arzabe works across media (painting, video, paper weaving) to investigate agency, perception, and goal-oriented thinking through playful experimentation. Obliquely informed by a background in engineering, his work posits human intervention against the physical properties of matter. Photos and press release for this artist.
I create paper sculptural installations that examine the social dynamics, textures, and histories of specific sites and communities. Elements from social research, exchanges, and geographic studies are used to build a model that looks at the stories and forces that have shaped our contemporary landscape. While the locations investigated in the work shift, I am […]
One of the most fraught subjects to talk about through artwork is art itself, the conflicts that it presents personally for the artist, and in the broader terms of the commercial and institutional stages of the art world. I address these topics through video, painting, and publications. I use dense theory as a foil to […]
As a Chinese Canadian woman I encounter many dilemmas and questions concerning identity. Overwhelmed by the evaluation and gaze of many cultures, I struggle with mere existence. Within the fractured and collapsing elements of my work, I reflect upon experiences of conflict and violence. Motifs of decay, the morbid, and the grotesque come out of […]
Growing up in Jim Crow South during the Civil Rights Movement, Ramekon O’Arwisters had a safe haven, quilting with his Grandmother where he was “embraced, important and special.” These early memories prompted his nascent series of unique crocheted/ceramic sculptures titled, Mending. Employing ordinary household, or decorative pottery, broken and discarded, O’Arwisters combined traditional crafts into a dimensional woven tapestry, […]
In recent projects I have addressed personal and collective memory through the lives of well-used objects. My current work does not seek to relieve the psychological anxiety of impermanence but rather to face it head on, heightening the present moment while allowing absurdity and humor to take hold. By engaging the senses and drawing out […]