MOISES SALAZAR — Ni de aquí, ni de allá / Neither from here nor from there || CAMERON DOWNEY — Three Things Last Forever || ANAT SHINAR — Inherited, Invented, concurrent solo art exhibitions of new paintings, sculpture, photography and installation art at HAIR+NAILS opening August 29, 2020.

Salazar, a Mexican American, Chicago-based, non-binary, queer artist shares their candy- colored glitter, paper mache, yarn paintings and sculpture, choosing materials for their cultural and personal value. The vibrant bling-i-ness offers a colorful, gentle, soft safe space for expression of trauma that undocumented immigrants and queer folk face.

Downey, a student of both art and environmental science takes an “antidisciplinary” approach, expressing the precarity of growing up in North Minneapolis through photograph, film, body, sculpture…

Shinar, an accomplished Minneapolis-based dance artist, presents her first installation work, in the H+N backroom: an exploration of memory through childhood objects.

Both Salazar (Chicago) and Downey (NY/Mpls) were included in the 2020 winter HAIR+NAILS group show FUTURE FUTURE. This summer, Cameron Downey guest curated a program of video and image projections — HOLDING SPACE — in the public, outdoor spaces at H+N, running 11 weeks through August 22. HAIR+NAILS is excited to expand its programming at the intersection of dance/performance and visual art with their first exhibition with Minneapolis-based Shinar.
About the shows:

Moises Salazar:

“Ni de aqui, nide alla is about regret. It is about abandonment, loneliness and endurance. This exhibition is about acknowledgment. Acknowledgment of the pain, homophobia and trauma children face in this country. The works are about displacement, alienation and rejection. It aims to respond to a lifetime’s worth of guilt caused by growing up queer to immigrant parents.

Ni de aquí, ni de allá is about mourning. It is about the neglect that queer children of color experience. It is a critical lens at the gratitude that first generation children are supposed to experience for being born in this country. The work is about disappointment. Disappointment that this mythical landscape, that promised opportunities and safety, did not live up to the expectations.

Ni de aquí, ni de allá is about growing up poor, fem, and Mexican on the southside of Chicago. The collection speaks on the complexities of being grateful for the life one is given but coming to terms with the lasting affects it creates. This body of work focuses on the estrangement one feels because they are considered different. It is about not belonging anywhere and everywhere. It is about looking for community and never being satisfied.

Ni de aquí, ni de allá is an exhibition dedicated for all the children that heard, no homo, fag, faggot, puto, and maricón in everyday conversation. It is for the kids that have nostalgia for a home they never experienced. It is for those who are alive today, not out of endurance and strength but out of fear and anxiety. This collection of work is for those who wished to find community within similar marginalized groups only to face rejection for being too fem, too brown, too radical.

This exhibition is for those who are still looking. For those who are shape shifters and celebrate their complexities. It is for the many children that succeeded and continue to succeed at survival. It’s for those who despite everything hope for love and self acceptance. This exhibition is a collection of painting and sculptures about a culmination of emotions and experiences dedicated for those that find comfort not being Ni de aquí, ni de allá.”

Cameron Downey:

“As a student of Visual Art and Environmental Science, antidisciplinary storytelling lay at the root of my passions in conceptual art-making. My work explores across medium– or rather rejects the obligation to notion between mediums– the varied and dynamic implications of suspension as they exist within Black experience. Having grown up North Minneapolis, Minnesota, this study of precarity subsists as a product of having to exist within constant new shapes, remembering without physical artifacts and making home only at the margins. Through photograph, film, body, sculpture and otherwise, my work sees instruction and event in these liminal technologies of being. I strive to archive, interrogate, unfurl, make altar of and bring fantasy to the sensory experience and constant need to be on toe and hand.”

Anat Shinar:

In her first installation for HAIR+NAILS, Anat Shinar explores how memories occupy space. In rediscovering childhood objects, Shinar organizes her associations as they trigger certain essential narratives. Shinar’s art practice is anchored in dance and yet she is a compulsive collector. Inherited, Invented resides in this tension — she loves how dance is fleeting and yet also honors her attachment to objects. As a child of immigrant parents, she feels objects hold more emotional weight than places. The choreographer in her is sensitive to the temporal landscapes of creation here. The recreation of her childhood room in the HAIR+NAILS back room combines: months of planning (sourcing bespoke Smurf wallpaper), COVID-era extreme precautions in coordination with her parents (Iowa visits and quarantining of furniture), and an inventive approximation of her shag carpet with painted mulch.

Artist bios:
Moises Salazar is a non-binary queer artist from Chicago. Being first generation Mexican American has cemented a conflict within Moises Salazar’s political identity, which is the conceptual focus of their practice. Whether addressing queer or immigrant bodies, their practice is tailored to showcasing the trauma, history, and barriers these people face. Reflecting on the lack of space and agency they possess, they present queer and immigrant bodies in environments where they can thrive and be safe. The spaces the figures inhabit are colorful, gentle, soft, and safe. The use of glitter, paper mache, and yarn are important in their work because of their cultural and personal value. The work of Moises Salazar is meant to showcase the trauma, history, and current state that undocumented immigrants and queer folk face. It is by examining the intersections of race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, queerness and the United States history that Moises Salazar addresses the reality of the barriers that immigrants and queer individuals face with the intention to begin to dismantle the myths and stereotypes used to criminalize and dehumanize them. Salazar’s paintings have previously been exhibited by HAIR+NAILS in FUTURE FUTURE (Jan/Feb 2020) and in FAIR (NADA + Artnet, May 2020).
Cameron Downey is an undergrad at Columbia University pursuing studies of Environmental Science and Visual Art. Born and raised in Minneapolis, MN, she oscillates between the midwest and Harlem, NY. Among artmaking, she spends time as a writer, advocate, curator and dreamer. Downey’s art has previously been exhibited by HAIR+NAILS in: HAIR+NAILS at 9 Herkimer (Brooklyn) in 2019 and FUTURE FUTURE (HAIR+NAILS MPLS) in Jan/Feb 2020. Downey guest curated HOLDING SPACE, an exhibition of video, image, light and sound, in the H+N frontyard this summer.
Anat Shinar is a Minneapolis-based dancer, choreographer, contemporary multidisciplinary performance artist, educator, curator, and member of Fresh Oysters Performance Research collective. She graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BFA in Dance and a BA in Visual Arts, and completed her Master’s degree in Arts and Cultural Leadership, also at the UMN. Her work has been commissioned by and presented at Center for Performance Research (Brooklyn), The Minnesota Museum of American Art, Walker Art Center, Pillsbury House Theater, Red Eye Theater, Southern Theater, The Soap Factory, SooVAC, and the Bryant-Lake Bowl. She is the Director of Community Partnerships at Young Dance, a dance education non-profit, as well as a Teaching Artist for Young Dance and the Cowles Center, working with students of all ages and abilities. Anat was a 2018 Naked Stages Fellow at Pillsbury House Theater in Minneapolis.

 

Project support 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.

 

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