The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2023: Contact Zone "Enmeshed, Dreams of Water"

Opening Reception: October 13, 6-9pm

As part of The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2023: Contact Zone, NARS Foundation is pleased to present Enmeshed, Dreams of Water an exhibition featuring twelve artists exploring metamorphosis and reflection at the intersection of sculpture, painting, fiber, video, and performance art. Enmeshed, Dreams of Water explores how new morphologies of identity emerge across time, place, and patterns of self-reflection. Here, water is reimagined as an access point that connects different parts of the self and of histories that cross generations. Whereas water is often a place through which borders and divisions are marked out, the artists featured here reclaim this space as a source of transformation and persistence. Fluidity and malleability reign.

Many works in the exhibition imagine an almost magical transportation across elemental routes, expressing paths of migration that require passage by ocean, air, or land to a new shore. In Umber Majeed’s Body of Water, two family members swing over a rug that resembles the ocean. Masha Vlasova’s work—composed of reflections on the lakes and streams of Northern Minnesota known as the Boundary Waters—is a meditation on natural life cycles and the potentialities of cinema. Centering a local waterway, Leila Seyedzadeh’s new installation East River is based on one of her bilingual poems in Persian and English; the visual image based on a diagram of her voice creates a mountainous landscape while a suspended piece of fabric imagines New York City’s saltwater tidal estuary that connects Upper New York Bay to Long Island Sound Other works raise questions about what it is like to be influenced by a place yet not fully assimilate to it by centering ‘enmeshed’ relationships between the body and surrounding environments. Jamie Martinez’s painting The Spirit of the Octopus invites the audience to think of the likenesses between humans and mollusks. Like us, they build cities–albeit underwater–they are adaptable in nature, and their memory is intergenerational. Martinez channels this intergenerational awareness by incorporating Pre-Columbian spells in his work, turning to his ancestors for protection. Jonathan Ojekunle’s selfportrait recognizes the environmental aspects of growth and journeying. The artists engage in metamorphic processes that speak to a continual capacity for growth. Body Of Water And Land is an interactive healing performance nurtured by research, shamanism, and ceremony. Kathie Halfin uses flower essences native to her native Crimean steppe and mountains to evoke the traditional customs of the region that has been annexed by Russia since 2014. While manifesting dignity and healing, Halfin moves across a canvas map of Ukraine and smudges it with herbal essences, acknowledging the harm being imposed by the Russian state on Ukrainian land and its people. The sound for this performance is created in collaboration with multimedia sound artist and composer Julia Santoli. Artists will also participate in an Artists’ Talk as part of NARS’ Entree/Encore series on October 27th, 6-8PM.