Curatorial Statement: Momentum Tulsa 2014
This exhibition displays a diverse survey of artistic practices that best reflects the current work of artists across the state of Oklahoma, age thirty and under. This year’s exhibition was intended to emphasize Social Practice and community engagement, which freely blurs the lines among object making, performance, community organizing, environmentalism and investigative journalism. Social practice can grant artists the flexibility to flow within and around various practices and disciplines, forming collaborations on a greater scale, and creating cultural access points. With that in mind, special attention was given to artists whose work promised a level of engagement that extended beyond the relationship between the viewer and the art object to one of participatory interaction and the contemplation of one’s role within their community.
Momentum Tulsa 2014 provides visitors with the opportunity to weave through a patchwork of distinct voices that reflect the roles these artists have adopted in their own communities. From the experimental space Dope Chapel facilitates in Norman, to the preservation of time and place in Robert Eastman’s photographs, to the personal gesture towards heritage acknowledged by the work of Sara Banta, this exhibition celebrates a breadth of artistic practices and aesthetics that are tied together by a common geographical vantage point: Oklahoma.
This exhibition features new work by three diverse practitioners in the state of Oklahoma: Billijo Zorn Sneed, Dillion Vitow, and Kerri Shadid. Each of these Spotlight Artists represents contemporary art practice in the region with intense vigor, craft, experimentation and vision. All three artists explore different elements of Social Practice from recycling of materials to direct engagement with the local community. They each question the state of an important element in their own world: human wastefulness, the economy, and the rules of language. Instead of critiquing from afar, these artists subdue these elements with artistic weapons of humor, wit, skill and participation.
Billijo Zorn Sneed challenges us to think about our land, waste, and ecological democracy without the dogmatic projection of a soapbox. Her empathy for the innocence of animals is reflected in sculptural figuration and waste taxidermy that forces us to confront our place in the landscape and our role in its destruction. Dillion Vitow’s Game Day project, could not be timed more carefully. With the arrival of football season in Norman paired with unending controversies surrounding the NFL and college sports, his work asks us to re-imagine our rituals, labors and economies of sports culture. Kerri Shadid’s poetry offers insight into the complicated nature of language and compartmentalizing of definitions. Her installation invites visitors to engage in the process of construction of new structures and view language with fresh perspective. Her astonishing marbleized papers and panels create a visual language of their own that complements her exploration of written syntax.
The role of the artist has always been one that challenges audiences’ tastes, worldviews, and even the evolving definition of “art.” We offer Momentum Tulsa 2014 as a survey of art in Oklahoma but also a forecasting of the way in which artistic practice will be created and experienced in years to come.
This exhibition displays a diverse survey of artistic practices that best reflects the current work of artists across the state of Oklahoma, age thirty and under. This year’s exhibition was intended to emphasize Social Practice and community engagement, which freely blurs the lines among object making, performance, community organizing, environmentalism and investigative journalism. Social practice can grant artists the flexibility to flow within and around various practices and disciplines, forming collaborations on a greater scale, and creating cultural access points. With that in mind, special attention was given to artists whose work promised a level of engagement that extended beyond the relationship between the viewer and the art object to one of participatory interaction and the contemplation of one’s role within their community.
Momentum Tulsa 2014 provides visitors with the opportunity to weave through a patchwork of distinct voices that reflect the roles these artists have adopted in their own communities. From the experimental space Dope Chapel facilitates in Norman, to the preservation of time and place in Robert Eastman’s photographs, to the personal gesture towards heritage acknowledged by the work of Sara Banta, this exhibition celebrates a breadth of artistic practices and aesthetics that are tied together by a common geographical vantage point: Oklahoma.
This exhibition features new work by three diverse practitioners in the state of Oklahoma: Billijo Zorn Sneed, Dillion Vitow, and Kerri Shadid. Each of these Spotlight Artists represents contemporary art practice in the region with intense vigor, craft, experimentation and vision. All three artists explore different elements of Social Practice from recycling of materials to direct engagement with the local community. They each question the state of an important element in their own world: human wastefulness, the economy, and the rules of language. Instead of critiquing from afar, these artists subdue these elements with artistic weapons of humor, wit, skill and participation.
Billijo Zorn Sneed challenges us to think about our land, waste, and ecological democracy without the dogmatic projection of a soapbox. Her empathy for the innocence of animals is reflected in sculptural figuration and waste taxidermy that forces us to confront our place in the landscape and our role in its destruction. Dillion Vitow’s Game Day project, could not be timed more carefully. With the arrival of football season in Norman paired with unending controversies surrounding the NFL and college sports, his work asks us to re-imagine our rituals, labors and economies of sports culture. Kerri Shadid’s poetry offers insight into the complicated nature of language and compartmentalizing of definitions. Her installation invites visitors to engage in the process of construction of new structures and view language with fresh perspective. Her astonishing marbleized papers and panels create a visual language of their own that complements her exploration of written syntax.
The role of the artist has always been one that challenges audiences’ tastes, worldviews, and even the evolving definition of “art.” We offer Momentum Tulsa 2014 as a survey of art in Oklahoma but also a forecasting of the way in which artistic practice will be created and experienced in years to come.