KIERAN MYLES-ANDRÉS TVERBAKK // But The Skin Of The Earth Is Seamless – LAMIA ABUKHADRA // The Shape of Thin Air – KELLEY MEISTER // Fallout Shelter
KIERAN MYLES-ANDRÉS TVERBAKK — But The Skin Of The Earth Is Seamless
LAMIA ABUKHADRA — The Shape of Thin Air
KELLEY MEISTER — Fallout Shelter
OPENING: Saturday, April 3, 2021
About the shows, in the artists’ words:
Kieran Myles-Andrés Tverbakk:
“But The Skin Of The Earth is Seamless is a series of sculptural artworks exploring our relationship to land and body. Reflecting on the harmful separations caused by ongoing settler colonialism and imperialism, I draw parallels between gender expectations imposed upon the body and human’s maltreatment of the earth.”
Lamia Abukhadra:
“The Shape of Thin Air ruminates on questions of form.
How does one locate and practice an aesthetic and political form which eludes co-option, outwits and counters the irrational yet hegemonic truths of the settler colony, existing for generations to come? What traditions did our ancestors (often proactively) practice to generate culture and kinship, and how can we resurrect them now?
I present an excerpt of my research: a series of studies on gaps, huddles, layers, mounds; the polyvocal, the chorus, the folkloric; the body (human and nonhuman) as witness, as stone, as mutable, as agent of resistance..”
My research-based practice studies and confronts the irrational truths, derived from imaginaries, ethoses, and tools, within settler colonial power and their extractive repercussions. Western colonial inventions such as urban planning, archiving, geography, and institutionalism affect the perception of Palestine and Palestinians, Palestinian daily life, intimacy, historiography, cultural production etc. I embed my own speculative frameworks, intuited from practices, existing long before the dawn of western hegemony, which bring to light intimate and historical connections, poetic occurrences, and generative possibilities of survival, mutation, and self-determination.”
Kelley Meister:
“In Fallout Shelter, a room-sized installation, I ask the audience to consider the practices of preparation that we engage in (or wish we had engaged in or purposefully do not engage in) when a disaster occurs. I am breaking open the narrow definition of a disaster to include personal disasters such as loss of a loved one or mental health crises; economic and financial disasters; oppressive disasters wrought by racist, colonizer-built systems that reverberate through multiple generations; environmental disasters like oil spills and those climate-change disasters wrought by fossil fuel and nuclear capitalism; as well as natural disasters that include earthquakes, pandemics, and bacterial overgrowths.
As an interdisciplinary artist, I build transformative experiences and environments that encourage empathy through a shared emotional experience or exploration. Over the last decade, my work has focused on shared worldwide issues, such as climate change and nuclear war, in order to investigate empathetic responses that emerge from global threats and existential fear. I approach my art as both a researcher and a sensitive human. Fear explored in my work is at times infused with levity to foster empathetic and understanding responses. I combine art, science, and social practice in order to cultivate empowerment as an antidote to fear through shared experiences, tools, and actions.
In the past year we have experienced multiple disasters. My artistic practice explores what constitutes natural and social landscapes as artistic material and as public engagement. Further, I am concerned with how humans impact our environments – in micro and macro ways – historically, currently, and in future possibilities. Tourism, disasters, NIMBY-mentality, resource extraction, waste storage, and American exceptionalism create entry points for my investigations. I resolve to represent things that are not tangible, including emotional responses, physical (but invisible) phenomena such as radiation or pollution, and that which is purposefully ‘invisibilized’ by the forces of colonialism and capitalism such as mutual aid and collective empowerment.”
Artist bios:
Kieran Myles-Andrés Tverbakk is an artist from Houston Texas, currently living and working on occupied Dakhóta land (Minneapolis-St.Paul). They create mixed media artwork exploring dichotomies within their experience as a first-generation Mexican-Norwegian-American who is also non-binary transgender. Tverbakk is a 2020 Artist Initiative Grant Recipient, awarded by the Minnesota State Arts Board, and has attended residencies at Vermont Studio Center and Blue Mountain Center.
Tverbakk’s art has previously been exhibited by HAIR+NAILS in RIGHT NOW (Dec/Jan 2020/2021).
Lamia Abukhadra (b. 1996) is a Palestinian American artist currently based in Beirut and Minneapolis.
Lamia graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BFA in interdisciplinary studio art in 2018 and is a 2019-2020 Home Workspace Program Fellow at Ashkal Alwan in Beirut. Her work has been exhibited at Waiting Room, the Quarter Gallery, Soo Visual Arts Center, Yeah Maybe, and the Katherine E. Nash Gallery in Minneapolis and in Chicago at Unpacked Mobile Gallery. Lamia is a 2018-2019 Jerome Emerging Printmaking Resident at Highpoint Center for Printmaking, a 2019 resident at ACRE and the University of Michigan’s Daring Dances initiative, and a recipient of a 2017 Soap Factory Rethinking Public Spaces grant. This fall, she will be a 2021-22 Jan Van Eyck Academie Resident in Maastricht, Netherlands.
Abukhadra’s art has previously been exhibited by HAIR+NAILS in FUTURE FUTURE (Jan/Feb 2020) and at the NADA Chicago Invitational in 2019.
Kelley Meister (pronouns: ze/hir/hirs) is a multidisciplinary artist whose current work includes a series of workshops (now mostly virtual), an upcoming mobile event (look for it Summer 2021!), and a robust studio practice. One goal of hir work is to bring people together to use art as a reflective tool for exploring disaster, resilience, fear, and empowerment. Kelley’s work has been shown around the country and abroad in galleries, theatres, film festivals, libraries, squats, online, outside, and in the streets. Hir work has been supported by the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. Ze received an MFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2008 and continues to live and work in Minneapolis. Kelley also works as a teaching artist in schools, libraries, museums/cultural production centers, and community centers throughout Mni Sota Makoce (so-called Minnesota) with COMPAS and the Science Museum of Minnesota.
Project support to HAIR+NAILS for this exhibition has been provided by the Visual Arts Fund, administered by Midway Contemporary Art with generous funding from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York.
Lamia Abukhadra’s project is supported by Ashkal Alwanand Art Jameel
Kelley Meister’s work is supported in part by the Jerome Foundation, the Anderson Center, the Camargo Foundation, and the Minnesota State Arts Board.
Kelley Meister is a fiscal year 2021 recipient of a Creative Support for Individuals grant and a 2019 recipient of an Artist Initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.
