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Curator and Artists’ Talk: Thursday, October 16 at 6:30pm
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Divergence is on view until October 25,
Join the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery on Thursday, October 16th at 6:30pm as they welcome guest curator Martha Jackson Jarvis and the Divergence artists, Shaunté Gates and Njena Surae Jarvis for the Curator and Artists’ Talk.
About the Exhibition
Please note: The gallery will be closed on Fri. 10/10 and Sat. 10/11 for an on-site cancer retreat.
The works of Shaunté Gates and Njena Surae Jarvis explore the body as metaphor, challenging the torpid qualities of painting and sculpture with a sense of didactic theater and enigmatic forms. Their works command and redefine space with mysterious pairings of disparate forms and malign compositions. There is a non-static reconfiguration, reconstruction and reinvention that occurs simultaneously that both disturbs and stimulates.
Both artists in their practice engage multiple forms of media; performance, video, and numerous materials to create socio-dynamic environments frozen in time and space. Each artist evokes the feeling and connotation of a sagacious still from a futuristic movie set or film clip. These young energetic artists, Njena Surae Jarvis and Shaunté Gates, provide us a non-linear transfixing glimpse of immortality and intrinsic momento mori.
We, as viewers, are made part of this ever-changing matrix that remains haunting, unknowable, and in a state of flux. We are never given entirety or convenient answers; rather, we are forced to discern, to distill, and, diverge from orthodoxy and conventional expectations, to complete the imaginative narrative unfolding before us. Divergence presents a complex forum and exacting commentary on contemporary life, challenging us to expand our vision and courageously walk life’s knife-edge, to perceive and find meaning in the gaps and unexplored places that connect us one to another.
The Joan Hisaoka Gallery is located at 1632 U Street NW. For more information call 202.483.8600 or visit www.smithcenter.org.
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