Every exhibition begins the same way: blank walls, quiet rooms, and possibility. 🖼️✨
Watch as the center's galleries transform into “Things I Had No Words For” by Clare Grill and Margaux Ogden, and “Seeing and Reading” by Dana Frankfort and Josephine Halvorson—two unique visions brought to life through careful preparation, design, and collaboration.
@claregrill@maggie_ogden@dmfrankfort@halvorsonstudio@bjholcombe
Today at noon, I’ll be leading the last second Thursday noontime tour for Never Spoken Again: Rogue Stories of Science and Collections. Free and open to the public, no RSVP necessary. I’m happy to share that we have toured 37 Virginia Tech classes through this exhibition.
The exhibition closes this Saturday, December 14.
Curated by David Ayala-Alfonso, Never Spoken Again: Rogue Stories of Science and Collections is a traveling exhibition that reflects on the birth of modern collections, the art institutions that sustain them, and their contingent origin stories to reveal a universe of erasures, violence, and fortuity. Considering how institutional collections organize our lives, Never Spoken Again brings together artists whose works open up a critique of material culture, iconography, and political ecologies.
Variously, the works make use of the language of the museum display and the ethnographical video to uncover stories of colonial exploitation, myths, fake currencies, war games, and the slow violence of systematic racism that historically underpin collecting practices. These practices examine not only the collected objects and the systems of distribution that facilitate their circulation, but also the disciplines and subjects of study that they trade in. Together they open the field for considering our agency in how our histories and futures may be constituted otherwise.
The exhibition tour has been organized by Independent Curators International (ICI).
Artists: Morehshin Allahyari, Maria Thereza Alves, François Bucher, Giuseppe Campuzano, Alia Farid, Sofia de Grenade, Laura Huertas Millán, Ulrik López, Carlos Motta, Beatriz Santiago Muñoz, Erkan Öznur, David Peña Lopera, Claudia Peña Salinas, Michael Rakowitz, Reyes Santiago Rojas, Daniel R. Small, and Felipe Steinberg
I’m excited to announce that two of my ceramic pieces will be featured in the Coined in the South Biennial at the Mint Museum Uptown in Charlotte, NC. The opening reception is this Thursday, and I’m looking forward to visiting the exhibition and see the works of all the artists on display. If you're in Charlotte, please stop by! The show will be on view from December 14, 2024, to April 27, 2025.
The name Coined in the South refers to both The Mint Museum’s origins as the first branch of the U.S. Mint, as well as the act of inventing. Many of the works selected for the 2024 Coined in the South exhibition reflect on personal narratives and cultural histories. The exhibition transcends any singular aesthetic, theme, or medium, striving to mirror the rich diversity and creative spirit of the Southern arts community.
Coined in the South is a juried biennial exhibition, created in collaboration with the Young Affiliates of the Mint (YAMs). For this year’s exhibition, nearly 1,500 works of art were submitted for review. A total of 49 artists were selected by the 2024 jurors: Marshall Price, PhD, chief curator at Nasher Museum of Art; Victoria Ramirez, PhD, executive director of Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts; and Stephanie Woods, artist and former Coined in the South participant.
This juried exhibition, presented by Young Affiliates of the Mint in collaboration with The Mint Museum, will be on view December 14, 2024 through April 27, 2025 at the Mint Museum Uptown Charlotte.
@themintmuseum #coinedinthesouth #2024 #contemporaryart #ceramics #handbuiltceramics #ceramicsculpture #brianholcombe
Part of Never Spoken Again: Rogue Stories of Science and Collections, Curated by David Ayala-Alfonso for Independent Curators International (ICI), this week in the Cube at the Moss Arts Center, we are screening works by Carlos Motta’s Corpo Fechado – The Devil’s Work, 2018 and Laura Huertas Millán’s Journey to a Land Otherwise Unknown, 2011 and Aequador, 2012
Tuesday, December 3-Saturday, December 7, 2024
Laura Huertas Millán
Journey to a Land Otherwise Unknown, 2011
Colombian, b. 1983
HD single-channel video (color, sound); 22:14 minutes
Courtesy of the artist
This work is a documentary fiction inspired by the colonial accounts of the natural and ethnographic explorations in America by conquistadors, missionaries, and scientists. Shot in the Tropical Greenhouse of Lille, France, the film uses both the architecture and the plants of this enclosed botanic garden as narrative supports. Led by the voiceover of an explorer, the film explores the notion of exoticism, evokes the violent origins of the so-called “New World,” and the endurance of the imagery they engendered.
@laura_huertas_millan@dayalaalfonso@curatorsintl
Part of Never Spoken Again: Rogue Stories of Science and Collections, Curated by David Ayala-Alfonso for Independent Curators International (ICI), this week in the Cube at the Moss Arts Center, we are screening works by Carlos Motta’s Corpo Fechado – The Devil’s Work, 2018 and Laura Huertas Millán’s Journey to a Land Otherwise Unknown, 2011 and Aequador, 2012
Tuesday, December 3-Saturday, December 7, 2024.
Carlos Motta
Corpo Fechado – The Devil’s Work, 2018
Colombian, b. 1978
HD single-channel video (color, sound); 24:47 minutes
Courtesy of the artist and P·P·O·W Gallery, New York
This video relates the true story of José Francisco Pereira, an 18th-century man who was kidnapped from West Africa and sold into slavery in Brazil. As a means of survival, Pereira (played by Angolan actor Paulo Pascoal), along with others in enslaved communities, developed syncretic spiritual practices that mixed African and Christian traditions in the form of bolsas de mandinga, or amulets, to protect fellow enslaved persons from injury. In 1731, after Pereira was sold to a slaveholder in Portugal, the Lisbon Inquisition discovered his activities and tried him for sorcery. Notably, he was also charged with sodomy, since he confessed to copulating with male demons in the course of making the amulets. Pereira was exiled from Lisbon and condemned to end his days as an enslaved rower on a galley ship. Corpo Fechado – The Devil’s Work imagines Pereira as the agent of his own narrative, reclaiming the terms of representation from the account of his own destruction.
Curated by David Ayala-Alfonso, Never Spoken Again: Rogue Stories of Science and Collections is a traveling exhibition that reflects on the birth of modern collections, the art institutions that sustain them, and their contingent origin stories to reveal a universe of erasures, violence, and fortuity. Considering how institutional collections organize our lives, Never Spoken Again brings together artists whose works open up a critique of material culture, iconography, and political ecologies.
@dayalaalfonso@curatorsintl@carlosalejandromotta@ppowgallery
Charisse Pearlina Weston at Art Basel Paris. Looking forward to Charisse’s exhibition at the Moss Art Center at Virginia Tech opening January 23, 2025
#charissepearlinaweston @artscenteratvt #contemporaryart #sculpture #glasssculpture #concreteart
