Courtesy of Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington.Reception: Saturday, February 25 from 5pm to 8pm
First Floor Galleries
Featured Artists: Ayanna Dozier, Amy Elkins, Melissa Joseph, Lydia McCarthy, Triton Mobley, Steve Pauley, and Rob Swainston + Zorawar Sidhu
Curated by Jacob Rhodes, Kris Racaniello, and Lisa Schilling
Catalog essay by Kirsten Gill
Crisis of Image features artists who resist the call for image erasure and instead develop new strategies for the production of visuality. Rather than seeking to escape the image or even to create new images, they explore the methods, access, and means of visual creation.
Throughout history, dominant cultural structures have imposed image censorship and constraints. Our saturated visual culture has produced new calls for image suppression – but why? One answer might be that the recent abundance of image making technologies has made visual production more accessible.
In the 1970s and 80s, images were claimed and revitalized by artists whose right to produce them had been historically denied – resulting in the emergence of new feminist, BIPoC, and queer representational strategies. The call to censor or constrain the image is often produced by a scarcity anxiety that seeks to maintain a status quo. Approaches that address this legacy of dominant heteropatriarchal aesthetics are one new direction for artists seeking equity in this saturated visual world.
Crisis of Image is curated by Jacob Rhodes, Kris Racaniello, and Lisa Schilling of Field Projects.
Field Projects is a collectively run, artist-centric gallery established in 2011. They believe in creating equity and opportunities for artists by placing community support over market profits. Based in Chelsea, New York City, Field Projects features bi-monthly onsite exhibitions as well as satellite shows, art fairs, Field Residency, Field Pod, and online exhibitions.
Museum of Contemporary Art Arlington is located at 3550 Wilson Blvd Arlington, VA 22201 | visit mocaarlington.org/ | (703) 248-6800
