The Newsroom
One of the biggest exports from the Arab world is news, including photojournalism. International attention on Arab news has increased in recent years, energized by landmark events such as the Gulf Wars and the so-called Arab Spring, a Western definition for the series of revolutions (violent and non-violent) that have erupted since 2010...
Ajyal: Generations - Maitha Bin Demithan
Artist Maitha Bin Demithan explores the traditions of the UAE, focusing on some of the rituals and symbolism that have historically made her culture distinct. Theatrically staged on black backdrops, garments such as a burqa, thoab and bisht are revered as precious specimens of heritage, many of which are disappearing from Emirati life...
Projections - Rose Marasco
Rose Marasco is preoccupied with invented photography. She describes this as “constructing an image to be photographed, or to be rendered directly onto light sensitive materials.” A master of layering, Marasco builds a minimum of two narratives into one work, forming complex studies of gender, architecture, and form...
Images: Found and Lost - Lorna Bieber
Photographs are forever engaged in the cyclical process of being lost and found. They are placeholders, indexical by their compositional referents as well as their keepers – their meaning continually altered by their context and readers...
Related - Anthony Goicolea
Anthony Goicolea’s Related is a web of personal narratives about the Cuban-American artist’s familial, religious, and cultural heritage. The artist strings together a complex series of dialectics denoting his experience of cultural dislocation, assimilation, and desire to maintain ancestral histories...
Members' Only: American Clubs - Beatrix Reinhardt
Within the club environs are physical remnants of events past: trophies, carpet worn in a particular fashion marking the flow of human traffic, stacked metal chairs, team posters. The physicality of such spaces suggests the importance of “togetherness” – social landscapes where commonalities such as...
Regarding Borders
Most definitions of the word “border” describe it as a line or plane that demarcates two or more physical spaces. Regularly used to define a geographical boundary, a border can be much more than that; figuratively speaking, it can imply political, cultural and even psychological delineations between entities. To regard a border is to...
Made by Will
Houstonian Will Michels (b. 1968) has been making portraits for more than twenty-five years. Initially driven to confront something that made him uncomfortable, he turned his camera’s gaze inward, and later to other male subjects. Made by Will is the first comprehensive exhibition of the artist’s more intimate work and includes four series...
Artist as Performer
Inspired by the era of YouTube, Artist as Performer features artists performing in front of the camera. Employing photography, video, and video installation, these artists use their bodies in constructions that are often quirky and perplexing...
Human Nature
Are we living for success, or excess? What kinds of stewardship methodologies are being practiced? How are we managing our and other species’ relationships with Earth? What types of energy are we using to subsist? What does population growth and urban sprawl look like on the landscape? What activities are taking place on a local level to support local farmers and growers and promote community? What is human nature?
Beauty Knows No Pain
Borrowing its title from the 1972 documentary by Magnum photographer Elliott Erwitt and the famed slogan of the Kilgore Rangerettes, Beauty Knows No Pain addresses the performance and perception of femininity in contemporary American culture...
Habitat 7
At the heart of Manhattan is Times Square, a celebrated symbol of commercial success and economic vibrancy. Depending on one's perspective, the "7" Train (IRT) either begins or terminates in Times Square. At the opposite end of the 7 Line in Flushing, immigrant communities flourish...
Unite and Untie: A portrait of opinions on conflict in the Middle East
The current wars in the Middle East are the result of extremely complex, interwoven issues built over the course of centuries. The tension derives from colonial influences, which have arbitrarily drawn and redrawn borders for economic reasons. Long term disputes within and between Jewish, Christian and Islamic faiths are compounded by autocratic ruling systems and Western culture’s imposition of democratic governments...
Marking Time: Victoria, TX, Immigrant Memorial Site
Marking Time: Victoria, TX, Immigrant Memorial Site, created by artists and collaborators Michele Grinstead and Nancy O’Connor, is an elegy to the individuals who perished in Victoria, Texas, on May 14, 2003. Early that morning, a semi-trailer truck containing at least 73 people from Latin America locked inside arrived at a truck stop in Victoria...
Sunburn
Chris McCaw’s Sunburn series is the result of a happy accident. While taking extended nighttime exposures of the stars during a camping trip, McCaw overslept, leaving the camera’s shutter open too long. His view camera was pointed due east, and the rising sun scorched the film, exposing it to ten thousand times the amount of sunlight needed to produce total black. Instead of discarding the burnt negative, however, he developed it—and found he liked the result...
Reality Interrupted: The Cinematic Work of the Sanchez Brothers
Montréal-based artists Carlos and Jason Sanchez create large-scale enigmatic images. Each image is its own unique, isolated crystallization of a psychologically-charged event that appears to be on the verge of unraveling...
Light Writes Always In Plural
In 1997, Norwegian artist Anne Senstad began using lens-based media to explore our associative sensorial experiences with light and color. Seeking to visually translate the sensations that arise from our perception of the two elements, Senstad arrests their movement and effect on architectonic space...
Antennae
Contemporary art, in conceptual and methodological terms, merges processes and ideas employed in the past with current technologies and ideologies. The art and photography of now are one in the same: a synthesis of cross-cultural references, cross-media references, and art historical references...
