Artists: John Akomfrah, Lyle Ashton-Harris, Cheryl Dunye, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Zoe Leonard, Mwangi Hutter, Zanele Muholi, Andrew Putter, Mickalene Thomas, and Carrie Mae Weems.

Glyphs: Acts of Inscription presents the work of ten international artists from Africa, Europe and the United States. The exhibition builds on the premise that identities are constituted through acts of inscription, real or imagined - into history, popular iconographies and artistic canons - and probes the consequences of such acts on the poetic and political dimensions of representation, difference and visibility.

Working in photography, moving image and mixed media, the artists represented cannibalize and query such archives to create new image repertoires that point to the lacunae—the silences, absences, and erasures— contained within prevalent visual-historical renderings. These critical interventions challenge existing discourses, destabilizing the deeply ambiguous and often surreal taxonomies of ‘raced’, gendered, and sexed representation. The results are collective imaginaries more able to accommodate the complexity of historically situated, lived experience.

In the works chosen for this exhibition, art becomes an alternate, subversive form of power that produces new, non-binary possibilities and paradigms—ones that disrupt, augment, and reclaim. Within these projects, we encounter desire, fantasy, seduction; oscillations between truth, memory, and fiction; documentation, invention, and performative deconstruction; strategies of assemblage, recyclage, and artistic exorcism.

The exhibition is accompanied by a symposium, a keynote lecture by Carrie Mae Weems, a screening of new work by John Akomfrah followed by conversation with the artist, and more.

Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Pitzer College Art Galleries, and the Pasadena Art Alliance.

Emerging Artist Series # 8: Danielle Adair: On the Rocks in the Land

Lenzner Family Art Gallery, September 19 – December 6, 2013

The documentary-performance-video installation, On the Rocks, In the Land analyzes the role of ‘tourist-observer,’ within contemporary ‘conflict zones,’ and questions how a ‘tourist’ perceives and experiences sites of historic and contemporary political significance. The project incorporates experiences of and around the peace lines of Belfast, the Berlin Wall, the Stone Walls of New England, the US-Mexican border in Ciudad Juárez and the Occupy Wall Street Movement. By highlighting these sites, the exhibition explores the notion of ‘play’ as a persistent and ethical form of resistance in relation to the physicality of a ‘wall’ as defined by these specific locations. Although exploring the intersection of place, politics, and play in these sites, the project resists the urge to enforce a dominant narrative, seeking instead to excavate unfamiliar forms of resistance and protest.

Jaider Esbell

Barbara Hinshaw Gallery, Grove House, October 1 – November 29, 2013

This exhibition will be taking place in conjunction with the course: “Run to the Forest,” co-taught by professor Leda Martins and Jaider Esbell, an indigenous artist from the Brazilian Amazon. The exhibition presents paintings that reflect on indigenous and global discourses of nature, sustainability, and development. There is a particular concern with the cosmologies and historical experiences of the Macuxi Indians. At the core of the exhibit, will be paintings from a series representing the history of cattle in the Macuxi territory; the cattle were introduced by white capitalist ranchers, and the paintings explore both the impact of the cattle on the environment and the ways that Macuxi Indians have understood and responded to the cattle and the ranchers. Macuxi artist Jaider Esbell was born and lives in the state of Roraima, in the northern Brazilian Amazon. He will spend the semester at Pitzer as a visiting artist/professor. A geographer as well as an artist, Esbell, uses different forms of visual means to synthesize elements of Macuxi cosmology, history and natural world, which are reflected in his paintings.