2018 NY VOLTA ART FAIR
March 7 - 11, 2018
Featured Artists: Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Bang Geul Han, Melvin Harper, Amy Khoshbin, Shaun Leonardo, Kambui Olujimi
In the 2018 NY VOLTA ART FAIR, Project for Empty Space represented Kameelah Janan Rasheed in the fair's critically acclaimed Curated Section, curated by Mickalene Thomas and Racquel Chevremont.
Additionally, PES Directors Jasmine Wahi and Rebecca Pauline Jampol organized a special project for The Video Wall // 2018 that lived in the fair's lounge. The wall work titled It is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror, featured five videos by artists that had been a part of the Project for Empty Space Residency or Exhibition program.
VOLTA took place at Pier 90, 12th Avenue (At West 50th Street), New York, NY 10019.
THE AESTHETICS OF MATTER
CURATED BY MICKALENE THOMAS & RACQUEL CHEVREMONT
KAMEELAH JANAN RASHEED
Mickalene Thomas and Racquel Chevremont assembled The Aesthetics of Matter across a 2,600-square-foot space in the heart of PIER 90, an array of freestanding museum-style walls that afforded and encouraged dialogue between artists, as well as a specific focus in contrast to the traditional booth architecture and solo projects surrounding it. “This exhibition will include paintings, sculpture, photography, video, text, and printed matter,” notes the co-curators. “The artists’ works are social and political through the form of collage, which has always been thought of as ‘a moment of crisis in consciousness’.”
Eight artists selected by Thomas and Chevremont were presented by eight galleries. Project for Empty Space represented the work of Kameelah Janan Rasheed, an artist whom they worked with in the past and were looking forward to as an Artist Scholar in Residence in 2019.
Kameelah Janan Rasheed is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist, writer, and former public high school teacher from East Palo Alto, CA. Through installation works that combine photography, printmaking, publications, poetry, and performance, Rasheed’s research and work examine language as it relates to constructions of Black subjectivity.
Rasheed’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work has been presented at the 2017 Venice Biennale, Institute of Contemporary Art - Philadelphia, Printed Matter, Jack Shainman Gallery, Studio Museum in Harlem, Bronx Museum, Queens Museum, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Pinchuk Art Centre, and others. Her work has been written about Artforum, Guernica Magazine, The New York Times, Art 21, Wall Street Journal, and ArtSlant.
VIDEO WALL // 2018:
Reception: MARCH 9TH, 6PM
IT IS ASTONISHING THE LENGTHS TO WHICH A PERSON, OR PEOPLE, WILL GO IN ORDER TO AVOID A TRUTHFUL MIRROR
t is astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror was a selection of short films that dealt with thematic derivations from the short story “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon,” by James Baldwin. The participating artists, Bang Geul Han, Melvin Harper, Amy Khoshbin, Shaun Leonardo, and Kambui Olujimi, each addresd a facet of contemporary American through video and new media explorations in response to the Baldwin text.
“This Morning, This Evening, So Soon,” was published in The Atlantic Monthly, in 1960, and later included in a collection of short stories, Going to Meet the Man, this piece followed it’s protagonist through a series of memories and reflections on the eve of his return to the United States after years of living in Paris. The protagonist, a famous Black actor in Paris, ruminated on the prevalence of racism, xenophobia, and anti-multiculturalism in America; he was particularly concerned for the welfare and reception of his White, European wife, Harriet, and their biracial son, Paul.
As with many of Baldwin delicate and visceral short stories, the thematic underpinnings of “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon,” were racism and violence, invisibility and imposed identity, love and loss, pain and precarity, and, perhaps most importantly, the intersections of all of the aforementioned human phenomena. It was astonishing the lengths to which a person, or a people, will go in order to avoid a truthful mirror, curators Jasmine Wahi and Rebecca Pauline Jampol, addressed these themes within a contemporary framework.
The collection of videos were intentionally underscored by both the timeliness and unfortunate timelessness of what they addressed: the cunning and murderous beast of bigotry and pain that still persisted throughout the American landscape. And the gorgeous cycle of imperfect love, pain, and loss, still unfailingly reincarnated as it does in Baldwin’s time, and all of time.
It was the intention of the curators to present a short glimpse of something that spoke to an America that remained incrementally changed, largely the same, messy, and perhaps broken.
The artists picked for this program had all been a part of the Project for Empty Space Residency or Exhibition program.
Bang Geul Han, Through the Gaps Between My Teeth, 2018 | 5:00 mins.
Melvin Harper, Watch, 2016 | 5:17 mins
Amy Khoshbin, Dispossess, 2014 | 1:00 min
Shaun Leonardo, Untitled (A Performance Project), April 19-21, 2013 | 10:00 mins
Kambui Olujimi, A Faint Notion, 2016 | 5:51 mins