Biomythography: Making Visible | Cerritos College | Cerritos College Art Gallery
February 10 - March 13, 2020 | OPENING RECEPTION: Monday, February 10, 2020, 6-9PM
Performance: Deadnaming by Thinh Nguyen @ 7PM
Artists: Caz Azevedo, Logan Dandridge, Chuck Feesago, Thinh Nguyen, Marton Robinson
Film Still from Marton Robinson, Daguerotipo, 2018
Biomythography: Making Visible is the eighth exhibition in an ongoing series that seeks to investigate biomythography as a visual arts practice. The term biomythography is a literary device created by Audre Lord to expand on limited demarcations of identity. UC Santa Cruz Dance Professor Ted Warburton defines biomythography as “the weaving together of myth, history, and biography in epic narrative form, a style of composition that represents all the ways in which we perceive the world.” By conventional definition, identity can be summarized as the qualities, beliefs, personality, looks, and expressions that make up a person and/or group. However, for those not represented or underrepresented by history, the nuances of identity are not covered by conventional definitions. Identity instead is an ever-shifting continuum of experiences; layered with histories, myths, readings, and re-readings. The job of biomythography is to expand perceptions, exposing more multifaceted, dimensional, and mutable considerations of self. It is at this point where the work begins, where the meaning of our identity intersects with the materials and experiences of our lives. For this iteration of the Biomythography exhibitionary series, the participating artists have, consciously or unconsciously, invoked the literary form of biomythography by engaging in unpacking the complexities of gender, political, and historical identities in order to make them visible. They collectively assert that identity is not a stable accumulation; rather, it is the shifting interplay of inseparable, yet distinct, relationships. By doing so, they provoke the viewer to reevaluate the lenses through which they’ve viewed individuals, including how they have come to recognize themselves.
Performance: Deadnaming by Thinh Nguyen During the opening reception, the artist Thinh Nguyen will activate their installation in a social performance, Deadnaming, as a rememberance of trans murders in the recent year. The installation itself is a simple altar desk with two candles, incense burner and holder, two vases of flowers, and the list of names on the wall. The performance is conducted in front of the altar with a mantra chant followed by a collective naming of the dead. The work is meant to give space for a personal mourning and to bring visibility to the epidemic of transphobic murdering of trans bodies.
This exhibition is guest curated by the collective Biomythography, made up of Northern California-based artists/curators, Chris Christion and Jessica Wimbley.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Caz Azevedo creates art from materials found within a personal landscape. Azevedo holds a Bachelor of Arts in Art Practice and History of Art from UC Berkeley and is a current MFA student at UC Davis.
Logan Ryland Dandridge (b. 1994, Richmond, VA) is a moving image artist whose films interrogate various histories through the poetics and aesthetics of experimental cinema. He received his BA from the University of Virginia in 2016 and his MFA in Studio Art from the University of Oxford’s Ruskin School of Art in 2018.
Chuck Feesago (b. 1954, Santa Ana, CA) is an installation artist whose work explores how indigenous communities collectively bring together fragments of their past to reassert their identities and empower themselves in the present and into the future. Feesago holds a BA from UC Irvine and a MFA from Claremont Graduate University. He is an Instructor at the University of La Verne.
Thinh Nguyen (b. 1984, Bảo An, Vietnam) is a cultural developer (artist, educator, independent curator, cultural critic) whose work investigates the intersections of cultural values. Utilizing various media, they explore and expose oppressive sociopolitical power structures. Nguyen has performed and exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at The Mistake Room, The Hammer Museum, REDCAT, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, and Contemporary Irish Art Center Los Angeles. They have staged institutional interventions at The New Museum, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Nguyen’s work has been written about in ArtForum, the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Magazine, LA Weekly, Hyperallergic, and Artillery Magazine.
Marton Robinson (b. 1979, San Jose, Costa Rica) has an interdisciplinary background with studies in Physical Education and Art. He holds a MFA from the Roski School of Art at USC. Robinson has shown his work at the X Bienal Centroamericana; el Museo de Arte y Diseño Contemporáneo (MADC) and Fundación Ars TEOR/éTica in San José Costa Rica; as well as the Getty Center, Eastside International, Angels Gate Art Center, and Monte Vista Projects, among others.
Cerritos College Art Gallery 11110 Alondra Blvd.Norwalk, CA 90650
Cerritos College Cerritos College Art Gallery
11110 Alondra Blvd.
Norwalk, CA 90650
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About Cerritos College: Cerritos College serves as a comprehensive community college for southeastern Los Angeles County. Communities within the college’s district include Artesia, Bellflower, Cerritos, Downey, Hawaiian Gardens, La Mirada, Norwalk, and portions of Bell Gardens, Lakewood, Long Beach, Santa Fe Springs and South Gate. Cerritos College offers degrees and certificates in more than 180 areas of study in nine divisions. Annually, more than 1,200 students successfully complete their course of studies, and enrollment currently averages 23,000 students.