4th Wall: HER.E i see lotus | Part II
A two-part film & video exhibition and performance program curated by Luxin Zhang
January 31, 2019 - February 17, 2019
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
HER.E i see lotus
A two-part film & video exhibition and performance program curated by Luxin Zhang
Part I: Friday, January 11, 2019 – Wednesday, January 30, 2019
Part II: Thursday, January 31, 2019 – Sunday, February 17, 2019
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
Organized as part of Vox Populi’s ongoing 4th Wall series, HER.E i see lotus, a film & video exhibition and performance program curated by Luxin Zhang, features the works of thirteen emerging, rising, and established international female artists living in the USA today working in video, film and/or performance. These artists embrace their own heritage, whilst consolidating a certain individualistic flair to their pieces. Works include short and mid-length film, experimental video, performance, fiction and documentary.
HER.E i see lotus is divided into two sections: Part I, Ripples on the water brings awareness to an array of themes pertaining to experience, observation, reflection, experimentation and being in the USA. PART II, Jiggling Petals showcases work that embodies strength, identity, intimacy and depth.
EVENTS
PART II, Jiggling Petals
Jan 31, 2019 – Feb 17, 2019
Various | 2019 | 60 minutes
This program features What I haven’t Known About Her by Yueying Feng, A National Dance by Salome Kokoladze, Korea Workout Routine by Yaloo Ji Yeon Lim, Self Portrait – AEG Vampyr by Selma Selman, The Boat Has Sailed, Hasn’t It? by Sichong Xie, and When We Started Using Sticks by Yilu Yang.
What I haven’t Known About Her by Yueying Feng
12’30’’, 2018
The film features two important female family members of the filmmaker, through narration of the protagonist and the filmmaker’s camera observation, it studies an untold family history that composed of sexual violations and oppressions against women in Contemporary China from an intimate perspective.
A National Dance by Salome Kokoladze
5’39’’, 2017
While national dances tend to focus on celebrating one’s nation and culture, “A National Dance” points to necessary violence that the existence of a nation entails. The video questions the discourse that idealizes the concept of a nation by focusing on disciplining and controlling mechanisms such as the police or the military and the ways in which they leave imprint on our bodies. The video piece is an interplay between found footage displaying quotidian movements in male-dominated disciplinary spaces and my own dance emulating these movements while being hyperfeminine. I create continuity between emasculation of men in the disciplinary spaces and subjugation of women in a day-to-day life. A national dance, in this context, becomes a set of body movements shaped and determined by patriarchal practices in Georgia.
Korea Workout Routine by Yaloo Ji Yeon Lim
5’00’’, 2017
Yaloo archives national workout routine campaign as a media artist.
Self Portrait – AEG Vampyr by Selma Selman
9’47’’, 2017
“Self-Portrait – AEG Vampyr” is a performance where I destroy multiple vacuums, sorting both the valuable parts and the less valuable parts. The metals and the motors are valuable, but the plastic is worthless. In addition, my family’s everyday survival is dependent on this exact same labor, but the metals and motors are sold in the recycling centers.
The Boat Has Sailed, Hasn’t It? by Sichong Xie
10’24’’, 2018
“The Boat Has Sailed, Hasn’t It?” is a logical continuation of projects like “For A Missing Funeral To Be Attended” (2018) and “The Boat Is Sinking” (2018). These are neither installations nor performances. The project “The Boat Has Sailed, Hasn’t It?” includes three parts – a fish’s funeral speech, a seesaw boat, and a floating dock in the Wesserunsett Lake, Maine. The voiceover present what Xie calls “boat conversations,” produced on a wooden seesaw boat that Xie built during the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture residency in 2018. What we see scrolling on the screen are not the documentation of the project but the search performed by Sichong Xie and Hadrien Gerenton with their personal and collective memories.
When We Started Using Sticks by Yilu Yang
16’19’’, 2018
From a macro-historical perspective, this work explores how human beings were using sticks and developing sticks into various tools to satisfy human desires. Meanwhile, this work implies how human beings progressed step by step, from wild primitive to intelligent creatures, while shows the reflection on the industrial revolution.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Alessia Cecchet is a maker of moving images. Originally from Italy, she makes hybrid films that incorporate live action film, found footage, stop motion animation, fibers and sculpture. Her work explores matters of loss, grief and memory with a specific attention with the way we look at animals and specifically animal death. Alessia holds an MFA in Film from Syracuse University and is a Ph.D Candidate in Film and Digital Media at the University of California Santa Cruz. Alessia’s films have been shown in several countries such as Italy, the US, Australia, Germany, the UK, Egypt, Spain, Republic of Kosovo, Czech Republic, Portugal, Romania, Sweden and Iran.
http://www.alessiacecchet.com/
Zhongwen Hu is a New York based painter, illustrator, and animator, who is proficient in combining joy and peace, and expresses the vibrant spirit and atmosphere of daily life scene. With a sensitive approach, her work can be seen in projects for galleries, book publishing and editorial. Among her many honors and awards include those from Top Shorts Online Film Festival Best Experimental Film; Five Continents International Film Festival Best Animation Short Film; Best Shorts Competition Award of Merit: Animation; etc. Zhongwen’s many exhibitions include those at “30 under 30” at Viridian Artists, curated by Whitney Museum Curator Chrissie Iles; Axis Gallery Sacramento; ArtHelix; Point of Contact Gallery; Baton Rouge Gallery; Random Access Gallery; Spark Contemporary Art Space; and Michael Sickler Gallery; among others.
https://www.zhongwenhu.com/
Yixuan Pan is an artist who was born and raised in the land of fish and rice, Hunan, China. To deal with issues of translation and communication as well as reimagining the western hegemony through a global outlook, her anti-disciplinary practice merges multiple media and modes of presentation such as installation, video, performance, lollipop making, music therapy practicing, choral conducting, and more. By dislocating language from its context and form, Pan questions the linguistic structures people learn and unlearn in relation to comfort, temperature, transparency, hierarchy and power dynamics.
Pan is a recipient of the Lighthouse Works Fellowship, Vermont Studio Center Fellowship, University Fellowship at Temple University, and the Laurie Wagman Prize in Glass at Tyler School of Art. Pan’s work have been exhibited nationally and internationally, including: Temple Contemporary Gallery, Vox Populi, Icebox Project, Fringe Arts, The Woodmere Art Museum and the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia, PA; The Pine Barren Gallery, Whitesbog Village, NJ; ARC Gallery, Chicago, IL; Yin Yang Acupuncture, Portland, OR; Bush Barn Art Center, Salem, OR; Asakusa KAMINARI, Tokyo, Japan; Haukijärvi Forest, Finland; CSUFT, Changsha, China. Pan holds a MFA in Glass from Tyler School of Art, Temple University; a BA from George Fox University in Oregon and a BA from Central South University of Forestry and Technology in China. And she did not stop learning.
http://www.panyixuanpan.com/
Boryana Rossa is an interdisciplinary artist and curator who works in the fields of electronic arts, film, video, performance, and photography. Rossa’s works have been shown internationally at such venues as Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, N.Y.; Feldman Gallery, N.Y.; Exit Art, N.Y., Kunstwerke and Akademie der Kunste, Berlin; the 1st and 2nd Moscow Biennial For Contemporary Art; Museum of Contemporary Art (MUMOK), Vienna; Zacheta Gallery, Warsaw; Sofia City Art Gallery; Institute of Contemporary Art, Sofia, Bulgaria; Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art (SAMCA), Sofia; National Gallery of Fine Arts, Sofia; 1st Balkan Biennale, Thesaloniki, Coreana Museum, Seoul.
http://boryanarossa.com
Kieu-Anh Truong is from Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam and has spent several years in the U.S pursuing filmmaking. Her films center on the notions of home and family. “an american family” and “Distant Interiors” are observations of different family dynamics and subtle nuances of cohabitation. Both short films show a keen interest in creating cinematic interiors where mini family-dramas unfold. Her films have been screened at Los Angeles Asian American Film Festival, Ithaca Pan Asian American Film Festival, Syracuse International Film Festival and soon at Seattle Asian American Festival. She also did video works for non-profit organizations such as the International Rescue Committee and Asia Society.
https://kieuanhtruongfilms.wordpress.com
Ana Vîjdea was born in Romania in 1991. She has a BA in Cinematography and Media and an MA in Interactive Multimedia from Babes-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca. Between 2012 and 2016 she was awarded several scholarships which allowed her to study in Turkey, Portugal and the United States. At the moment she is pursuing a MFA in Film at Syracuse University.
French expatriate and Pataphysics enthusiast, Loraine Wible works with digital material to bring to this world joyfully surrealist, absurdly political, and radically futuristic post cards from her intellectual and emotional voyages. She has spent the last decade in Cincinnati where she ran art museum parodies, curated literally elevated art shows, opened fictitious art galleries, sang songs devoted to lasers, bitched about the future, and made a never-ending stream of non-existing images. She also recently joined the Art Academy of Cincinnati as assistant professor of video and motion graphics and the Philadelphia-based art collective Vox Populi.
http://www.lorainewible.com/
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Luxin Zhang is an interdisciplinary artist and curator who works in Philadelphia, PA. She holds a B.S from Far Eastern University and received her MFA from Syracuse University in the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Her work often takes the form of performance, video, sound and photography. As a classically trained vocalist, she creates video and performance that plays with audience expectation. Widening the lens of performance and stage to include original audience, gallery viewers and mundane “off stage” scenes expands the spectrum of a song’s larger subliminal language.
Luxin Zhang has exhibited and performed internationally in galleries, museums, concert halls, including Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse; David Geffen Hall, Lincoln Center in New York. Her work was also shown at Light Work in Syracuse, N.Y. She recently joined Vox Populi Gallery in Philadelphia, PA as an artist collective member.
