Avenue 50 Studio is pleased to announce the exhibition Changing Ties: Reconsidering Identity Through Cross-cultural Interventions.
Changing Ties is an exhibit that functions as an art intervention to contemporary and historical divisions between the Black and Brown communities within Los Angeles. The divisions have been visibly apparent through gang warfare, in schools, jails and certain communities. The intent of this exhibition is to present certain models that explore strategies of engagement between the Black and Brown cultures that point to an intercultural dialogue in contrast to the negative documentation.
Changing Ties challenges the common notion that identity lies within a fixed state -- that we fall into a category that is not susceptible to change as we encounter other cultures. The artists in this exhibition mine from popular culture and cross-cultural experiences to locate the place where intercultural engagements can occur, where subjectivities merge. The artists take into account the significance of cultural specificity and its importance in their lives and work; yet they understand that who they are cannot be contained solely within those parameters. They also work in the contemporary fashion of finding a particular medium to articulate an idea, as opposed to finding a particular idea to fit a medium. The exhibition will showcase works in various mediums raging from painting, drawing, video and sculpture. The artists in the exhibition engage cultural signifiers from Black, Brown, and popular culture to destabilize their assumed location.
Perhaps by exploring the formation of the subjective identity and the intermingling of cultures, we can come to the realization that as people we merge more than we chose to believe. As such, there can never be a true polarization, as our “cultural” subjectivities continue to merge with other cultures. Hence, to “change ties”, as the title of the exhibition suggests, alludes to adopting a reasoning that confronts commonly held ethno-nationalistic values and, as previously mentioned, presents a different model that deconstructs a rigid tie to the notion of identity. The exhibited artists believe that art can serve as an important vehicle to generate conversations that address these societal tensions and hence have broad social relevance.
*Currently exhibiting in the Phantom Sighting exhibition at the L.A. County Art Museum.
June 13- July 6, 2008
Avenue 50 Studio, Inc. a 501(c)(3) non-profit art gallery
131 N. Avenue 50, Highland Park, CA 90042
323/258-1435 The series, “Black/Brown Dialogues” is supported in part by the Ford Foundation, JP Morgan Chase, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and Southwest Airlines through a grant from the NALAC Fund for the Arts
