An online exhibition project created from open-sourced content. 7 artists and 7 different works presented each week for 9 weeks from April 4 - May 30.
To maintain our commitment to presenting exciting artists and programing at TAM, we decided to present online - on our website and social media pages - in lieu of TAM’s Spring 2020 Exhibitions (April 4 - May16). Due to popular demand, this online project was extended through May 30.
Artists were selected from your suggestions! Below are the 9 weeks (63 works) of HOBSON’S CHOICE.
Monica Wyatt
AS THE WORLD QUIETS
2020
Steel chain, medical glass vials, lightbulbs, wire.
7 x 32 x 12 inches
I made this piece during the "stay at home" order, my psyche anxious and disoriented. The result was a sculpture that reflected my unconscious need to feel grounded (heavy rusted chain) and hopeful, the fragility and vulnerability of this moment in time ever-present.
Detail:
Grace Lynne Haynes
Redeemed
2020
Gouache, pastel, collage on paper
27 x 40 inches
My works consists of composed paintings containing bright textures and patterns. These intricate moments are juxtaposed against flat, black swaths of paint shaped to represent black female bodies. I strive to lead the viewer to question the very nature of color and how historically symbolic meanings surrounding colors and shades, especially black, are constructed. In my work, black appears aspirational, dignified, and sublime. The result is a network of images addressing complex topics and stereotypes surrounding black femininity. My paintings portrays tender moments as women lounge in a glorious environment with painted patterns against washed of color. I chose the piece "Redeemed" because it addresses a history of female nudes by showcasing the Black body in the reclining position. It also addresses material culture by incorporating various elements of collage, in conjunction with pastel and gouache. Parts of the figure are sourced in from various textured papers such as alligator scales and tiger stripes, revealing the animalistic nature of sexuality as well as stereotypes that have burdened Black women. This piece highlights my most recent body of work and most accurately represents my thesis.
Dani Vinokurov
Falling Into Grace
2018
Ink, watercolor, paper and fiber
15 x 22 inches
Nominated by Tara Centybear:
Dani’s artwork bursts with human curiosity and vulnerability. Her delicate works on paper are stories from our dreams, they acknowledge but rebuff the shallow truths we tell ourselves each day, and instead encourage us to believe in the things we are scared to hold too close for fear that the risk will be too great. Fragments of our human stories are brought together each piece resting on her pure white background that emanates optimism and light. Meticulous in her making, sewing, painting, cutting, and collaging, Dani produces fragile works that let us momentarily tap into the parts of us that are breakable and beautiful in a way that very few experiences in life bring about.
Arezoo Bharthania
LAX / IKA - IKA / LAX 2
2020
Transfer onto different materials, paint, printed fabric, mylar, spray paint, gold metal rod
dimensions variable
My work reflects the experience of creating a home while existing in a state of in-between. It is a narrative formed through layers and gestures that blend my childhood and early adulthood in Iran with my current life in Los Angeles. The space I occupy is navigated through the bodily experience of womanhood and a balance of dichotomies: public and private, psychological and physical environments, here and there. This specific installation is constructing a home within the space, making connections to build anchors within the disconnect and displacement of diaspora fuel my artistic explorations.The homes that I have inhabited across geographies represent a multilayered construction of identity influenced by interdependent forces that define roles, govern behaviors, and order power relationships.
Khang Nguyen
Summit of Limpidity
2020
Oil on canvas
50 x 35 inches
I have selected this piece because it is about finding inner peace and clarity during this difficult time. This turning inward of awareness is neither about passivity nor escapism. Rather, through composure and clarity of mind we can better cope with the challenges of our time.
Ashton S. Phillips
Exposed
2020
exposed tree root, exposed urban earth, scrap industrial aluminum, rain, leaves, & weeds
site-specific installation approximately 30 x 24 x 6 inches
I selected this work because I think it speaks to the moment we are all living through. I began digging these holes/pits/abstracted graves in the earth in early February as the CoVID pandemic started appearing in the news. This is the last one I completed before being quarantined to my home on March 19. I originally titled this work "As Above, So Below", thinking of the work as a gesture to the interrelatedness of all material reality and the artificiality of manmade boundaries, like city/ground, culture/nature, body/environment. I still think the work addresses those ideas, but, as the pandemic has spread and triggered indefinite state-wide "stay at home" orders, I have come to see this work, more and more, as an expression of vulnerability and grief. So, I am submitting it with a new title: "Exposed." Like these roots that were once concealed and protected by the soft earth around them, we are all now exposed. Exposed to the novel coronavirus, yes, but also exposed to the naiveté of our ways of thinking about the world before. We must now face our own vulnerability and interdependence, just as a bare root depends on the rain, the soil, and its place within a larger living organism for survival. Once severed from the root network and cut off from the tree, the root will die. The virus is teaching us, we are not so different. There is beauty and terror in this. May we look into the empty graves that are being dug all around us, fill them with more tears than bodies, and learn to see the sky in the bare ground.
Jessica Schaefer
Was ich nicht lassen kann IX
2008
C-print, ed. of 5
19.7 x 27.6 inches
Nominated by Sandra Mann:
As the world experiences shortages of toilet paper - I think we can all appreciate her photograph.
