Emerson Contemporary

Announcement

Emerson College’s platform for presenting contemporary visual art – proudly presents off the pedestal, a multimedia group exhibition featuring visual artists Laura Anderson Barbata, New Red Order, and Paula J. Wilson. The exhibition is on view in the Media Art Gallery at 25 Avery Street from August 1 - October 5, 2024, free and open to the public Tuesday - Saturday, 12-6 p.m.

The exhibition is part of Emerson Contemporary’s Regarding Monuments: Visualizing Hidden Histories, a multi-year initiative that includes exhibitions centered on monuments, several public art installations, and a technology incubator. A project created with the Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture support as a part of their Un-monument initiative, funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. off the pedestal is further supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Curated by Distinguished Curator-in-Residence Leonie Bradbury and Curator of Special Projects Shana Dumont Garr, off the pedestal speaks directly to the national phenomenon of the removal of Confederate and other racist monuments in the wake of the police murder of George Floyd. Although monuments are generally presented as permanent, timeless, and expressive of universal values, this exhibition proposes that public memory could be more effectively addressed and activated through ephemeral expressions.

Laura Anderson Barbata’s multidisciplinary performance work Indigo is a call to action in response to the violence and murder of Black persons at the hands of the police. A group of sixteen resplendent characters clad in hand-dyed fabrics, woven details, and ornate stitching, many standing at the height of stilts, powerfully demonstrate the textile art aspect of Barbata’s vision.

New Red Order’s large-scale video installation Culture Capture: Crimes Against Reality examines the contradictions inherent in a society built on both the longing for indigeneity and the violent erasure of Indigenous peoples. They base their critique on historical events, and the pacing of the digitized imagery, accompanied by skillful sound design, transports viewers into their speculative reveries.

Paula J. Wilson’s performative video Living Monument and 2D wall work Thyself monumentalize Black female bodies through dramatic scale and bold gestures. Her work elevates embodied histories and reminds us that joy and celebration are crucial parts of resistance.

Artist Reception: Tuesday, September 17, 2024, 5-7 p.m.
Location: Media Art Gallery, 25 Avery Street, Boston, MA.

For the upcoming Artist Talk schedule, please visit the events webpage.

About the artists

Laura Anderson Barbata (Mexico City, 1958) is a Mexican, transdisciplinary artist. Since 1992 she has developed sustainable art-centered projects that integrate collaborative and participatory work to address social justice and the environment. It is her belief that a shared artistic and social practice can serve as a platform on which we connect, learn, exchange, create, and transcend borders in order to activate our sense of belonging to our local and global community. Her work seeks to further the expectations of socially-engaged art by involving collaborators such as archives, scientists, activists, musicians, street dancers, and artisans to create works that operate both inside and outside of the art world. Since 2001 she began to work with stilt dancers in Trinidad and Tobago, since 2007 she has collaborated with the Brooklyn Jumbies, and in 2012 with the Zancudos de Zaachila from Oaxaca, Mexico. The resulting interventions combine character and narrative development with numerous collaborators in addition to textile arts, sculpture, dance, masking, music, procession, improvisation, ritual, and protest.

New Red Order is a public secret society facilitated by core contributors Adam Khalil (Ojibway), Zack Khalil (Ojibway), and Jackson Polys (Tlingit). In our current period of existential and environmental catastrophe, desires for Indigenous epistemologies increase and enterprising settlers labor to extract this understanding as if it were a natural resource. New Red Order—emerging out of contradistinction from the Improved Order of Red Men, a secret society that 'plays Indian'—calls attraction toward indigeneity into question, yet promotes this desire, and enjoins potential non-Indigenous accomplices to participate in the co-examination and expansion of Indigenous agency. Working with an interdisciplinary network of informants, NRO co-produces video, performance, and installation works that confront settler colonial tendencies and obstacles to Indigenous growth. They have presented their work at Art Sonje, Artists Space, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Kunstverein in Hamburg, Lincoln Center, Momenta Biennale de l’image, Museum of Modern Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, New York Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Toronto Biennial 2019, Walker Art Center, and Whitney Biennial 2019, among others, expanding the public secret society network across numerous institutional platforms.

Paula J. Wilson (Chicago, IL, 1975) Paula Wilson is a multimedia artist whose densely layered, colorful, and often monumental works utilize a variety of techniques, including painting, collage, film, installation, performance, and printmaking. Born in Chicago, IL, Wilson received her BFA from Washington University in 1998 and her MFA from Columbia University in 2005. Wilson’s artworks are part of the collections at The Studio Museum in Harlem, Yale University, Princeton University Art Museum, The Albuquerque Museum, and The New York Public Library. She has been featured in publications such as Hyperallergic, Artforum, The New York Times, The Brooklyn Rail, and The New Yorker.

She is a recipient of several prestigious awards, including the Joan Mitchell Artist Grant, Bob and Happy Doran Fellowship at Yale University, Princeton University’s Hodder Grant, and the Lunder Institute Ossorio Fellowship. In 2007, Wilson moved from Brooklyn to Carrizozo, New Mexico (population 942), where she lives with her woodworking husband and collaborator, Mike Lagg. In 2015, Wilson, Lagg, and Warren and Joan Malkerson co-founded the Carrizozo Artists-in-Residence program. In 2010, Wilson and Lagg also co-founded the arts organization MoMAZoZo, which hosts weekly art activities and children’s workshops.

Laura Anderson Barbata's 'Queen' piece, a masked figure with an indigo flower head, fringe shirt and beaded accents

About Emerson Contemporary

Emerson Contemporary is the College’s platform for showcasing contemporary visual art. It is focused on presenting living artists, their ideas, experiments and creative practices in the areas of media art, performance art and emergent technologies, while critically examining these works in their social context.

About the College

Based in Boston, Massachusetts, opposite the historic Boston Common and in the heart of the city’s Theatre District, Emerson College educates individuals who will solve problems and change the world through engaged leadership in communication and the arts, a mission informed by liberal learning. The College has approximately 4,161 undergraduates and 554 graduate students from across the United States and nearly 70 countries. Supported by state-of-the-art facilities and a renowned faculty, students participate in more than 90 student organizations and performance groups. Emerson is known for its experiential learning programs at Emerson Los Angeles, located in Hollywood, and at its 14th-century castle, in the Netherlands. Additionally, there are opportunities to study in Washington, DC, London, China, the Czech Republic, Spain, Austria, Greece, France, Ireland, Mexico, Cuba, England, and South Africa. The College has an active network of 51,000+ alumni who hold leadership positions in communication and the arts. For more information, visit emerson.edu.

For more information contact

Michelle Gaseau

Contact by phone: 6178248540