Enacting Stillness Opening
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
6 to 8pm
Joan Jonas, Songdelay, 1973. Black and white 16mm film with sound. Duration 18:35 min. Courtesy Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI), New York. [Image Description: A black and white film still/aeriel view of two people on a cobblestone street. One person dressed in all black holds the end of a long rod and a person in black plants and a light colored sweater holds the other end. The person in black stands on the white outline of a circle. The other person stands behind a white line. On the top left of the picture is a dilapidated concrete ground with more intact concrete ground to the top right of the photo.]
Enacting Stillness was on view from Wednesday, September 21 to Friday, January 13, 2017. The exhibition considered the political potential of slowing down and stopping as forms of resistance, protest, and refusal. An international group of artists engage in practices that challenge and upend our expectations for the continuity of performative compositions, lines of movement, and modes of thought. Working with the disciplines of choreography, theater, moving image, sculpture and performance, Enacting Stillness presented a multivalent reflection on political histories from the Americas to Europe and Asia, with projects that employ a range of gestures and time-based practices to question what unexpected ruptures like meditation, contemplation, rest, and distortions of movement and time might mean to both the artist and the viewer.
Enacting Stillness featured artists John Ahearn, Rehan Ansari, Nicolás Dumit Estevéz, Brendan Fernandes, Alicia Grullón, Yoko Inoue, Joan Jonas, Claudia Joskowicz, Kirsten Justesen, Kimsooja, Carlos Martiel, Bruce Nauman, Clifford Owens, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Emily Roysdon, and Roman Stětina. Together, the artists in this exhibition presented the parallel connections between art and political engagement, between stillness and activation.
Please find more details about the exhibition here.