“Where Do We Migrate To?” Travelling Exhibition Reviewed in Art in America

“Where Do We Migrate To?”, a national touring exhibition organized by the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC), was reviewed for the June/July issue of Art in America. The exhibit was curated by Niels Van Tomme, director of arts and media at Provisions Learning Project in Washington, DC, and features 19 internationally-recognized artists and art collectives.

The works exhibited deal in various mediums with the subject of migration, ranging from the two video pieces by Kimsooja and Julika Rudelius which anchor the exhibition, to more sculptural and installation-oriented work by Blane De St. Croix and the French collective Claire Fontaine, and photographic prints by Xaviera Simmons, to name just a few. Markus characterized the exhibition as a success, saying that “intelligent curatorial decisions transformed what might have been a straightforward thematic survey into a thought-provoking examination of the discontinuities that persist in our steadily globalizing world.”

“Where Do We Migrate To?” was featured from February 3 to April 15 in the Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Gallery of the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center, which is part of the Parsons New School for Design in New York City. It is being exhibited at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans from June 30 to October 7 according to Markus’ review, and will travel from there to the Ruben Center for the Visual Arts in El Paso, Texas, for dates to be announced.

Kevin Kallaugher, Artist-in-Residence, in Financiarul

Kevin “KAL” Kallaugher, UMBC artist-in-residence and cartoonist for The Economist and The Baltimore Sun, is exhibiting his work at the National Museum of Contemporary Arts in Bucharest, and was co-organized with the U.S. Embassy in Romania. The exhibit opened May 15.

The exhibit was covered by Financiarul on May 17, with the newspaper writing that it portrays “a wide range of themes, including American symbols, the fight against terror, the American economy and big corporations, the US in a world context as well as American political leaders.”

The English-language version of the article can be found here.

Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery Presents “The Photographer’s Eye” (4/9 – 5/31)

The Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery presents The Photographer’s Eye: Civil War Photographs Selected from the UMBC Photography Collections, on display from April 9 through May 31.

The American Civil War coincided with the early years of photography, and the images captured by the early practitioners of this art have helped to shape the memories of this central historical event. Technological limitations, artistic aspirations and societal expectations strongly impacted the images produced by photographers “documenting” the events of the Civil War. This exhibition will explore the art and artifice of Civil War photography, while revealing something about why each of the selected 81 images was produced.

The Gallery is open Monday through Friday, 12 noon to 4 pm, on Thursday until 8 pm, and Saturday and Sunday 1 – 5 pm. Admission is free. For more information call 410-455-2270.

The presentation of this exhibition is supported by an arts program grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support comes from the Friends of the Library & Gallery, the Libby Kuhn Foundation and individual contributions.

Passage on the Underground Railroad (1/29 – 3/22)

Stephen Marc - Running Man, Digital montage/archival pigment inkjet print, 9" x 26" (22.5" x 37.5" framed), Courtesy of the artist

The Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery presents Passage on the Underground Railroad, artwork by Stephen Marc, organized by the University at Buffalo Art Galleries, Buffalo, New York, and curated by Sandra H. Olsen. The exhibition will be on display from January 29 through March 22.

Stephen Marc’s fascinating photographs and digital montages explore the history of freedom seekers on the Underground Railroad. With this body of work, Marc combines contemporary images with historic documents and artifacts to create richly-layered objects that bring the past palpably into the present. For seven years the artist photographed the routes traveled by fugitive slaves in their search for freedom, documenting and interpreting his research along the way. In Passage on the Underground Railroad, Marc shares the results of these explorations through eighty-seven thought- provoking, unconventional, and haunting digital images.

Marc uses two types of photographic composites to reveal the history of the Underground Railroad (UGRR): multiple photographs that describe UGRR sites and metaphorical montages that address the larger horror of slavery. Each UGRR site has a story, so individual sites are portrayed inside and out, using several photographs in combination to create visual tours. The companion montages evocatively interpret the South’s “peculiar institution” from which slaves were fleeing. These multilayered narratives weave together elements from the landscape of slavery—plantation structures, crop fields, waterways, tools of bondage and agriculture, merchant tokens and bank note currency, newspaper articles, and advertisements—along with UGRR site details, antislavery materials, and contemporary cultural references.

The Gallery is open Monday through Friday, 12 noon to 4 pm, on Thursday until 8 pm, and Saturday and Sunday 1 – 5 pm. Admission is free. For more information call x52270.

On Wednesday, March 7 at 4 pm, Stephen Marc will present a lecture on his work.

The presentation of this exhibition is supported by an arts program grant from the Maryland State Arts Council, an agency funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. Additional support comes from the Friends of the Library & Gallery, the Libby Kuhn Foundation and individual contributions. For this exhibition and publication, Stephen Marc has received ongoing support from Olympus Imaging America, Inc., as well as from the National Park Service as a National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program.

MFA Imaging and Digital Arts Thesis Exhibition (1/26 – 2/18)

Image: Gary Kachadourian, Proposal Image for "Apartment Complex"

The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture presents the MFA Imaging and Digital Arts Thesis Exhibition, which features works by graduates of UMBC’s MFA programs in Imaging and Digital Arts. The 2012 exhibition will include work of graduate students in robotics, photography, performance art and trans materials. The exhibition opens on January 26 and will remain on display through February 18.

Artists featured will include Meghan Flanigan, Gary Kachadourian, Timothy Noble and Ali Seley.

Meghan Flanigan’s work, I Will Disappear to You, can be experienced as either a live, one-on-one performance or as a video installation. The performances will occur at the following times, and by appointment. The video installation will be shown at all other times.
Friday, January 27, 12 – 1 pm
Saturday, January 28, 2 – 3 pm
Wednesday, February 1, 12 – 1 pm
Thursday, February 2, 3:30 – 4:30 pm (immediately prior to the opening reception)
Friday, February 3, 12 – 1 pm
Saturday, February 4, 2 – 3 pm
Wednesday, February 8, 12 – 1 pm
Friday, February 10, 12 – 1 pm
Saturday, February 11, 2 – 3 pm
Wednesday, February 15, 12 – 1 pm
Friday, February 17, 12 – 1 pm

An opening reception will be held on Thursday, February 2, from 5 to 7 pm.

Admission to the exhibition is free. The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm and is located in the Fine Arts Building. For more information call 410-455-3188.

The Arts & Humanities at UMBC: think create engage

CADVC Exhibition “Where Do We Migrate To?” Tours to New York

The exhibition Where Do We Migrate To?, organized by the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, will tour in spring 2012 to the Sheila C. Johnson Design Center at Parsons The New School for Design. Opening on February 2, the exhibition will remain on view through April 15.

Artists Space in New York will host a launch for a book that accompanies the exhibition, also entitled Where Do We Migrate To?, on December 15 from 6 to 8 p.m. Svetlana Boym, an artist whose work is featured in the exhibition and who contributed an essay to the book, will speak.

Curated by Niels Van Tomme, Director of Arts and Media at Provisions Learning Project in Washington, D.C., Where Do We Migrate To? explores contemporary issues of migration as well as experiences of displacement and exile. Situating the contemporary individual in a world of advanced globalization, the artworks address how a multiplicity of migratory encounters demand an increasingly complex understanding of the human condition. As such, the exhibition allows multiple perspectives about its subject matter to unfold simultaneously, opening up a range of political, psychological, poetic, and pragmatic manifestations of the contemporary migrant experience. The exhibition was originally on view at UMBC from March 17 to May 7, 2011.

Image: Xaviera Simmons, (detail) Superunknown (Alive In The), 2010, C-prints mounted on Sintra, dimensions variable/size of installation variable, first produced for Greater New York 2010 MoMA/PS.1.