That Which Defines Us – Gallery Guide

That Which Defines Us

BCA exhibitions that investigate our sense of identity—who we are, where we come from, and what we will become.

Tuan Andrew Nguyen, The Island (video still), 2017

GALLERY GU IDE FEBRUARY 22 - JUNE 9, 2019

Skin Ego (installation detail), 2019

FIRST FLOOR GALLERY

REBECCA WEISMAN SKIN EGO OVERVIEW Rebecca Weisman examines unconscious and psychological spaces of identity and the body. The artist combines video, sound, and sculpture to create a largescale, immersive installation for the BCA Center. Skin Ego is comprised of several narrative threads that weave a story about the body’s corporeal nature: its permeability and messiness, as well as the physical and psychic viscera it strives to contain.

A central component of Skin Ego is an eight by twenty foot sculptural recreation of a stranded whale. The whale’s intestines spill out from its skin, or appear as two bulging, suspended masses that sway at intervals from hooks in the ceiling.

Entering the whale, one moves from an exterior to an interior realm. Four videos combine found footage with the artist’s own re-enactment of the whale’s dissection further entwining the relationship between artist and leviathan.

An enigmatic score conveys a mood that is as comforting as it is uneasy. Tonal tempos are punctuated by an Irish fisherman’s voice as he recites excerpts from French psychoanalyst Didier Anzieu’s book The Skin Ego (1985). The cornerstone for Anzieu’s book and theory is based on this quote from psychoanalysis founder, Sigmund Freud, as read aloud by the fisherman/filmmaker:1

The ego is first and foremost a bodily ego; it is not merely a surface

entity, but itself the projection of a surface. I.e. the ego is ultimately

derived from bodily sensations, chiefly from those springing from the

surface of the body. It may thus be regarded as a mental projection

of the surface of the body...

Exiting the whale’s interior, and visible along the far side of the gallery, are the ephemera of the artist’s performance: suit, boots, gloves, flensing knife, and whale teeth scattered on the wall and floor. The installation's seemingly grotesque scene evokes a visceral, sensory experience as well as an aesthetic one of strange beauty. As Weisman states Skin Ego “is at once poignant and pleasurable.”

Skin Ego also becomes a potent metaphor for the artist’s creative process with its sanguine colors, visual textures, and tactile materials.

Within her surreal environment Weisman spins a provocative story between herself and the whale, capturing the interaction between the interior of our unconscious and the exterior of our own skin.

Skin Ego is inspired by a 2009 video Weisman found online of the post-mortem dissection of a Finback whale that had beached itself on the coast of southern Ireland. The voice of the Irish fisherman is the same individual who originally produced the video of the whale’s dissection.

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FIRST FLOOR GALLERY

REBECCA WEISMAN SKIN EGO CHECKLIST Skin Ego Installation Courtesy of the artist Price upon request Skin Ego is comprised of several elements: The Whale Foam, acrylic, latex, cardboard, wood 8' x 8' x 20'

Skin Ego Films 4 single-channel HD videos various dimensions

The Intestines Nylon, poly-fil, acrylic, rope, motors Each: 3' x 3' x 6' For sale: $5,000 each

Suit, Knife, and Teeth Urethane resin, found objects (80 teeth) various dimensions

BIOGRAPHY Rebecca Weisman (b. 1982, United States) is a multimedia artist who examines unconscious and psychological spaces in order to challenge notions about the permanence of personal identity. She received her BA in Studio Art from Reed College, Oregon, and her MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College, Vermont. Weisman’s work has been exhibited locally and internationally at venues such as The Garner Arts Center, New York; University of Cincinnati, Ohio; King’s College, Ontario, Canada; Goddard College, Vermont; and Saint Michael’s College, Vermont. She has published articles in Nāmarūpa magazine, C Magazine, and the International Journal of Žižek Studies. She currently resides in Richmond, Vermont.

Rebecca Weisman: Skin Ego is commissioned in part by BCA Center. Skin Ego is the third installment of Project Vermont, a new series dedicated to experimentation by providing a setting for contemporary Vermont artists to push their artistic practice while creating new work.

FIRST FLOOR GALLERY

BARBARA ZUCKER ADORNED: HAIRSTYLES OF AN ANCIENT DYNASTY OVERVIEW Barbara Zucker debuts her new work, Adorned: Hairstyles of an Ancient Dynasty, featuring an installation of suspended, acrylic abstractions and four black-andwhite paintings inspired by the stylized hairstyles of Chinese Tang dynasty tomb figures.

Upon first glance, Adorned’s curvilinear forms appear to float in the center of the gallery as undulating abstractions. As our gaze adjusts, these undulating shapes coalesce into distinctive knots, twists, loops, and braids of hair styled and shaped in a language of their own.

Since the 1990s, the artist has explored the subject of hair in her sculpture— how it is shaped, removed, or adorned—to create perceptive, often humorous, observations on gender and culture. She is fascinated by the complex ways in which hair conveys meaning. Across cultures and time periods, personal and public realms, hair is a powerful signifier of one’s class, status, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and authority.

Exploring non-western techniques and imagery for artistic inspiration is a thread that runs throughout Zucker’s work. In 2006, while visiting Musée Guimet in Paris, Zucker was drawn to a group of small Chinese ceramic sculptures from the 8th century; the unfamiliar, poetic hairstyles of these Tang tomb figures fascinated the artist. From drawings made in a small sketchbook, she subsequently enlarged the sketches into abstract black and white paintings. These paintings remained forgotten until a few years ago when they were rediscovered by the artist and became the impetus for a new series of work and the origins of her current installation.1 By elevating something as seemingly innocuous as a hairstyle from the distant past, Zucker transcends culture and history with her work. These elegant and abstract shapes hovering “at cocktail party height” urge us to consider the essence of hair; and what meaning hair conveys about each of us in society.

As Zucker was developing Adorned, a friend of hers who is a neuroscientist at University of Maryland, Baltimore, mentioned to a fellow scientist, Weihong Lin, the artist was researching source material on Tang dynasty tomb figures.

Weihong was fascinated with Zucker's project and offered to write the character “Tang” in three Chinese variants of the word. Weihong’s gift to the artist appears on the gallery's south wall and has been incorporated as a collaborative element of the installation.

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FIRST FLOOR GALLERY

BARBARA ZUCKER ADORNED: HAIRSTYLES OF AN ANCIENT DYNASTY CHECKLIST Adorned: Hairstyles of an Ancient Dynasty 2019 Installation Plexiglass, cable, works on paper, and painting 6' 7" x 8' x 7’6" (sculture only) Courtesy of the artist Price upon request Adorned is comprised of several elements: Two Versions, Side by Side, 2006-2018 Black paint, paper flowers 24 1/4" x 31 1/4" For Sale: $3,000

Hairstyles Floating in Space, 2018 Grey and black paint, photocopies, black glitter, surface adhesive 31 1/4" x 22 1/4" For Sale: $3,000

Topknot, 2006 black paint on paper 40 1/2" x 31 1/4" For Sale: $3,500 Portrait of a Hairstyle, 2006-2018 Collage, paint, photocopy and tape on paper 26 1/4" x 22 1/4" For Sale: $3,000

As part of the exhibition, a limited edition sculpture is available: Three-Quarter View, 2018 Plexiglass, edition of 5 21 1/2" x 10 3/4" Price upon request

BIOGRAPHY Barbara Zucker (b. 1940, Philadelphia, PA) is an American sculptor who lives and works in both Vermont and New York. She received her MFA in Sculpture from Hunter College, New York with further studies at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan, and the Kokoschka School of Vision, Austria. A recognized educator, Zucker taught at Fordham University; Philadelphia College of Art; Yale University; and the University of Vermont between 1979-2001. In 1972, she co-founded A.I.R. Gallery in Brooklyn, New York, the first artist-run gallery for women in the United States. Her works are found in the Whitney Museum of American Art as well as private and corporate collections.

Adorned (installation detail), 2019

SECOND FLOOR GALLERY

IMPERFECT SOCIETIES

KILUANJI KIA HENDA and TUAN ANDREW NGUYEN

OVERVIEW Featuring the work of international artists Kiluanji Kia Henda and Tuan Andrew Nguyen, Imperfect Societies probes themes of history, trauma, and nationhood set within the tropes of science fiction.

Kiluanji Kia Henda plunges viewers into parallel traditions at pivotal moments in Angolan history, from the politics of Marxism-Leninism, the practice of witchcraft, or Angola’s oil boom as told within sci-fi narratives of the Cold War. Often working in film or photography, Henda employs a sense of humor and criticality in his work, which investigates topics of identity, politics, and perceptions of post-colonialism and modernism in Africa.

Icarus 13, The First Journey to the Sun is comprised of eight photographs accompanied by a written account that appears to document the construction and launch of a spectacular solar mission from Luanda, Angola. Photographs taken of sites and monuments within modern-day Angola are repurposed by the artist to create a new narrative—one that entwines a postcolonial people’s optimism and imagination for the future with the reality of Angola’s problematic history. As in the Greek myth, Icarus 13 serves as a cautionary tale of the perils of pride, and potential for failure, as a society pursues reinvention and prosperity.

Tuan Andrew Nguyen’s dystopian short film, The Island, depicts a future with the last two people on earth. Set on Pulau Bidong­—where the artist and his family were once forced to call home—the film features the tiny Malaysian island that was once the largest and longest-operating refugee camp following the Vietnam War.1 In Nguyen’s tale, Pulau Bidong’s sole inhabitant encounters the only remaining survivor washed ashore following the world’s final nuclear conflict. Amidst overgrown jungle and crumbling monuments, the two characters engage in a philosophic dialogue—struggling to find meaning in both past events and an ominous future. Combining vivid cinematography with documentary film footage, the artists connects past, future, and personal narratives to create an evocative account of emigration and cultural displacement.

More than 250,000 people inhabited the island between 1978 and 1991. At one time 40,000 people occupied the area (roughly the size of a football field) making it one of the most densely populated places in the world.

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BIOGRAPHY Kiluanji Kia Henda (b. 1978, Luanda, Angola) creates work drawing upon photography, video, and performance focusing on themes of identity, politics, and perceptions of post-colonialism and modernism in Africa. He has exhibited internationally at venues such as HANGAR Centro de Investigação Artística, Lisbon; Goodman Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa; International Studio and Curatorial Practice, New York; and Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Washington. His work has been featured in biennials in Venice, Dakar, and São Paulo as well as major travelling exhibitions such as Making Africa: A Continent of Contemporary Design, High Museum of Art, Atlanta. In 2017, he received the prestigious Frieze Artist Award. Henda currently lives and works between Luanda, Angola and Lisbon, Portugal.

Tuan Andrew Nguyen (b. 1976, Saigon, Vietnam) uses film as a medium to question the individual’s relationship to history, nationhood, and cultural displacement. He received his BFA from the University of California, Irvine, and his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, Irvine. Nguyen has shown in numerous film festivals and international exhibitions, including works in the collections of Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane; Carré d'Art, Nîmes; the Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. The artist has received several awards in both film and art, including an Art Matters grant in 2010. His works are published globally in Art Practical and Art Asia Pacific.

Nguyen currently resides in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

SECOND FLOOR GALLERY

IMPERFECT SOCIETIES

KILUANJI KIA HENDA and TUAN ANDREW NGUYEN

Icarus 13 (installation detail), 2019

KILUANJI KIA HENDA The Spaceship Icarus 13, Luanda, 2006 Astronomy Observatory, Namibe Desert, 2006 Centre of Astronomy Studies and Astronauts Training, Namibe Desert, 2006 Building the Spaceship Icarus 13, 2006 Icarus 13 (View from the Chicala Island, Luanda), 2007

The Launch of Icarus 13 (6:00pm, 25th of May, 2007), 2007 First Picture of the Sun’s Photosphere from Icarus 13 in Orbit, 2007 The Return of the Astronauts (5:00am, 9th of June, 2007), 2007 All works: Color photograph mounted on board 31 ½" x 47 ¼" Courtesy for the Artist and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg

The Island (video still detail), 2017

TUAN ANDREW NGUYEN

The Island, 2017 Film, 5.1 surround sound; 42 min.

Courtesy for the Artist and James Cohan, New York

Showtimes: Tuesday - Thursday 12:10pm | 1:10pm | 2:10pm | 3:10pm | 4:10pm Friday & Saturday additional screenings: 5:10pm | 6:10pm | 7:10pm

GALLERY

PUBLIC PROGRAMS

Artist at Work: Rebecca Weisman Wednesday, March 6, 2019, 6-7:30 PM 2nd Floor, LBG Room, BCA Center Princess: Out There* Saturday, March 23, 2019, 8 PM 2nd Floor, LBG Room, BCA Center $5 per person / Free for BCA members * In collaboration from JD Sampson, TEEN and visual artist Jennifer Meriden

Alm@ Perez Robopoems: Quadruped@s Wednesday, April 17, 2019, 6-7 PM Lower Level, BCA Center Family Art Saturday Saturday, March 16, April 20, May 25, 2019, 11-1 PM Fourth Floor, BCA Center

Exhibit overviews and biographies: Heather Ferrell, Curator and Director of Exhibitions Editorial assistance: Colin Storrs, Curatorial Assistant and Gallery Coordinator

BCA Exhibitions are funded in part by a grant from the The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, and Vermont Arts Council.

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