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Curatorial Fellowship 2023

Something earned, Something left behind

curated by Kehayr Brown-Ransaw

Curatorial Fellowship 2023 / Kehayr Brown-Ransaw

Something earned, Something left behind

curated by Kehayr Brown-Ransaw /

MINNEAPOLIS, MN

Curatorial Fellowship 2023 / Curatorial Statement

Table of Contents

07............... Curatorial Statement

Safe from Under the Ox by Kehayr Brown-Ransaw 18 ��Further Reading

Curatorial Statement: Safe From Under the Ox

22................. Exhibition Checklist 26.................. Acknowledgements

“...In reality it is a society of black and brown people who lived for three or four hundred years without ever being able to speak of themselves as ‘black.’ Black is an identity which had to be learned and could only be learned in a certain moment...” — Stuart Hall, “Minimal Selves” 1

By Kehayr Brown-Ransaw /

2023 Curatorial Fellow

So often in my experience as an artist, I find more success when I align my work with my race and not with the historical or traditional practices I employ. This truth is affirmed through conversations with colleagues, a lived experience that says, “Work is more powerful when your identity is the commodity for consumption.” Our cultural objects are collected and held as artifacts in museums for ogling and passive education, but are so rarely included in context with their larger history. This practice divides our identities only in relation to pre- and postcolonialism, denying

Cover: J Taran Diamond, “Pony II (detail),” 2022. Courtesy of the Artist. 1

Stuart Hall, “Minimal Selves,” in Identity: The Real Me (London: ICA, 1987), 45.

LEFT: Milan Warner, “Hanging with meat sweaters,” 2020. p.8: J Taran Diamond, “Pony II,” 2022. All photos are by Benjamin James

p.9: J Taran Diamond, “Pony I,” “Pony II,” “Takedown I,” Takedown II,” 2022

Roberts unless otherwise noted.

(top to bottom). 7

Curatorial Fellowship 2023 /

Curatorial Statement

colonialism’s persistence and our futures. Our contributions to art and craft are limited to their historical violence, myths, and condition as artifacts. While we proudly identify ourselves as non-white, we are also not allowed to identify as American, or any other country that isn’t “where we are from.” When we are included in exhibitions, it is in pursuit of multiculturalism and the works selected can be largely traumatizing for POC (People of Color) viewers.

Above: Nooshin Hakim & Pedram Baldari, “What House Now?” 2022.

Something earned, Something left behind is an exhibition that critically analyzes the transactional and political languages of everyday and culturally significant objects. This exhibition challenges a history of exclusion and inclusion of POC narratives from the canon of craft. It dissects this history’s origins and precedent as an economical transaction to gain access to white spaces. Featured works by Nooshin Hakim and Pedram Baldari, J Taran Diamond, Linda Sok, Thương Hoài Trần, and Milan Warner demonstrate radical acts of care and seam

together multiple identities. To tackle these ideas of identity and multiculturalism, I feel a need to address the tension between the tokenizing desire to impose and celebrate multicultural identities and a seemingly forced acculturation of an American identity– American being referential to the United States and not referential to the Americas. In Reconsidering Identity Politics: An Introduction, Linda Martín Alcoff and Satya P. Mohanty write, “[W]e contend that identities can be no less real for being socially and historically situated, and for being relational, dynamic, and, at times, ideological entrapments.” 2 Though the lived experiences are individual to the six exhibiting artists, there is a collective familiarity amongst us. Our shared historical traumas allow us to relate and express ideas in similar ways beyond language. There is a need for institutions to engage aesthetics and conceptual practices while simultaneously contextualizing and considering artists’ culture/race/ethnicity/class/ sexuality/etc. Racial and ethnic identities influence the way individuals perceive themselves, the way others perceive them, and the way they choose to behave. For this reason, we are expected to perform certain roles in order to fit into hegemonic institutions. These roles result in an active shrinking of individuals and the racialized part of them, or a personal exploitation of their racialized selves. I curated this exhibition to address and redress the ways narrowed populations have been included, and the ways in which they have been asked to participate.

Linda Martín Alcoff and Satya P. Mohanty, “Reconsidering Identity

Politics: An Introduction,” in Identity Politics Reconsidered, eds. Linda Martín Alcoff, Michael Hames-García, Satya P. Mohanty, and Paula M. L. Moya (London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 6.

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Curatorial Statement

The work on view, my research, and relationships I’ve built with artists build lasting connections, create space, and legitimize POC narratives with depth and care. These relationships with the artists and their work stand in opposition to the extractive tokenization of institutional spaces where POC voices are often excluded or further marginalized. The artists’ practices work against expectations of POC work, expanding discourse and inserting new subjectivity into the canon of art and craft. The exhibition concepts engage a community hungry for the revitalization and resuscitation of non-Western voices within art spaces. This exhibition challenges the expectations of art from artists of marginalized backgrounds and embraces a new subjectivity of interrogating one’s inherited experiences. Conceptually, this exhibition was born after the artists were selected. I knew who and what works I wanted to see together, but I could not articulate why their practices made such an impact on me. In the same week I read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass and Okwui Enwezor’s essay “Archive Fever: Photography between History and the Monument,” to gain perspective and understanding of Place, History, Trauma, and Healing as vital characters in our path. In his essay, Enwezor examines the works of visual artists and the ways their pieces engage with archives. In the conclusion of his essay, Enwezor asserts that, “... against the tendency of contemporary forms of amnesia whereby the archive becomes a site of lost origins and memory is dispossessed, it is also within the archive that acts of remembering and regeneration occur, where a suture between the past and present is performed…”. This struck me when considering the works of the artists in this exhibition, their motivations, and the past conversations with colleagues also engaging in archival practices.

The works in this exhibition were not chosen or intended to be easily identified visually and aesthetically within the context of craft. This is intentional to honor the ways in which our experience draws us back to ancestral experience and objects and practices. I felt it would be a disservice to employ craft in its academic sense, and instead I focused on the materials and ways artists connected to various facets of their identity. To work with materials and traditions that offer small vignettes into cultures that have been removed or lost from the artist’s everyday life offers a place to heal and reconnect. Enwezor encapsulates this idea through his cared— for use of the word suture. Exhibiting works by Nooshin Hakim and Pedram Baldari, J Taran Diamond, Linda Sok, Thương Hoài Trần, and Milan Warner, Something earned, Something left behind evokes intimate moments of care for the mind, body, and heart. These six artists represent a new way of understanding memory and self-identity, revealing small fragments of lived experience, reminding viewers that memories are not fixed and free to change. The works on view demonstrate a sense of care for the artist, for the family whose story they offer, and for the viewer receiving their story. Time collapses in on itself within our bodies, we inherit our ancestors’ experiences while creating our own, and we will pass along ours with each new generation, but in this exhibition time can stand still, quiet, contemplative, and breathe. By bringing these six artists together I want to draw attention to the hands of the artists in the creation of these works–and the histories, people, and memories they carry—together as one.

Enwezor, Okwui. “Archive Fever: Photography between History and the

Monument” in Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art. (New York, NY: International Center of Photography, and Göttingen: Steidl, 2008), 47. p.12-13: THƯƠNG HOÀI TRẦN, NGUYỄN VĂN BẢN,” “NGUYỄN THỊ ĐỊNH,” “NGUYỄN THỊ XOAN,” “TRẦN MINH THẢO,” 2022. (left to right)

Curatorial Fellowship 2023 /

Further Reading

Alexander, Meena. /

The Shock of

Hongo, Garrett. /

Arrival:Reflections on

The Mirror Diary: Selected Essays. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2017.

Postcolonial Experience. Boston, MA: South End Press,

Kimmerer, Robin Wall.

1996.

Braiding Sweetgrass. Minneapolis, MN: Milkweed Editions, 2015, 2015.

Alcoff, Linda Martín, and Satya P. Mohanty.

Morrison, Toni.

“Reconsidering Identity

Beloved. London, England: Vintage Classics, 2007.

Politics: An Introduction.” In Identity Politics

Scott, Joan W.

Reconsidered. 1st ed.

“Multiculturalism and the Politics of Identity.” Rajchman,

London, UK: Palgrave

John, Ed. In The identity in question, edited by John

Macmillan, 2006.

Rajchman, John, Ed.. Cambridge, MAass: MIT Press, 1992.

Enwezor, Okwui.

Takaki, Ronald.

“Archive Fever: Photography between History and the

A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America. New York, NY: Little, Brown & Company, 2008.

Monument” in Archive Fever:

Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art. New York, NY: International Center of Photography, and Göttingen: Steidl, 2008. Golden, Thelma. /

“What’s White?” In 1993

Biennial Exhibition (exhibition catalog). New York, NY: Whitney Museum of American Art and Harry Abrams, 1993. Hall, Stuart. /

“Minimal Selves.” In

Identity: The Real Me. London, England: Institute of Contemporary Art, 1987. p.16: Linda Sok, “We are going to temple tomorrow, who wanna come? (Pidan),” 2022. p.17 (detail): Linda Sok, “We are going to temple tomorrow, who wanna come? (Pidan),” 2022. 18

Curatorial Fellowship 2023 /

Exhibition Checklist

J Taran Diamond /

Takedown I, 2022 Nickel, powder coat, dyed silicone, braiding hair, thread,

THƯƠNG HOÀI TRẦN / NGUYỄN THỊ ĐỊNH, 2022

Handwoven painted warp, cotton, metallic yarn, and fengshui

stainless steel

coins

J Taran Diamond /

Takedown II, 2022 Nickel, powder coat, dyed silicone, braiding hair, thread,

THƯƠNG HOÀI TRẦN / NGUYỄN VĂN BẢN, 2022

Handwoven painted warp, cotton, metallic yarn, and fengshui

stainless steel

coins

J Taran Diamond

Milan Warner

Pony I, 2022

Hanging with meat sweaters, 2020

Nickel, powder coat, dyed silicone, braiding hair, cultured

Window weights, acrylic silicone caulk, rope, twine, dye,

freshwater pearls, hair elastics, thread, stainless steel

adhesivE

J Taran Diamond /

Pony II, 2022 Nickel, powder coat, dyed silicone, braiding hair, cultured freshwater pearls, hair elastics, thread, stainless steel

Nooshin Hakim & Pedram Baldari /

E PLURIBUS UNUM, 2022 Acrylic mirror, wood, aluminum

Nooshin Hakim & Pedram Baldari /

What House Now?, 2022 Acrylic mirror, wood, aluminum

Linda Sok /

We are going to temple tomorrow, who wanna come? (Pidan), 2022 Silk, screen print, metal

THƯƠNG HOÀI TRẦN / TRẦN MINH THẢO, 2022

Handwoven painted warp, cotton, metallic yarn, and fengshui coins

THƯƠNG HOÀI TRẦN / NGUYỄN THỊ XOAN, 2022

Handwoven painted warp, cotton, metallic yarn, and fengshui coins

p.20: Nooshin Hakim & Pedram Baldari, “What House Now?” 2022. p.21: Nooshin Hakim & Pedram Baldari, “E PLURIBUS UNUM,” 2022. 22

Curatorial Fellowship 2023 /

acknowledgements

Curator’s Acknowledgements I, and the artists involved in this exhibition, want to honor this land, and we acknowledge that this show is being carried out on unceded lands amidst a backdrop of ongoing colonialism and oppression of Indigenous peoples. It is with great privilege that we get to live—and hope to thrive— within our communities. As we seek to find safety and create spaces for ourselves, we understand that this privilege is at the cost of the forced removal of native peoples from this land. The Center for Craft is located on the occupied and unceded land of the Miccosukee, ᎠᏂᏴᏫᏯᎢ Anikituwagi (Cherokee, East), and Tsoyaha (Yuchi) peoples whose territory stretches across much of Kentucky, Northern Alabama, Northern Georgia, North and South Carolina, and Tennessee. As we honor the land, I also want to honor the following people for all of their work to help bring this exhibition to life: Pedram Baldari, Ian Brownlee, Liz Carleton, Sarah Darro, J Taran Diamond, Lisette Gallaher, Nooshin Hakim, Shawnya Harris, Carrie Helmkamp, Erik Pedersen, Lauren Roquemore, Living Colors, Nico Sardina, Linda Sok, Thương Hoài Trần, Devyn Vasquez, Milan Warner, and Marilyn Zapf. And Love and Thanks to Daniel Atkinson, Genevieve DeLeon, and Sally Frater for reteaching me how to care.

p.24-25: Milan Warner, “Hanging with meat sweaters,” 2020. 26

Kehayr Brown-Ransaw is an interdisciplinary artist, curator, and educator based in Bde Óta Othúŋwe/Mnísota (Minneapolis/Minnesota). BrownRansaw’s current practice engages in conversations of familial histories, self/ government documentation, and Black identity through quilting and printmaking.