September 10 to October 29

Curated by Ronald Lopez

Featuring works by Azadeh Tajpour, Kristin Ross Lauterbach & Christina Lee Storm, Lea Redmond, Ofunne Obiamiwe, and SaeRi Cho Dobson
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“Harmony Reverberates Optimism” is in-conjunction with the “The Purpose of Being” project at LMU’s Thomas P. Kelly Student Gallery (A BCLA Bellarmine Forum event)

For its one year anniversary exhibition, JAUS is pleased to present Harmony Reverberates Optimism curated by Ronald Lopez featuring works by Azadeh Tajpour, Kristin Ross Lauterbach & Christina Lee Storm, Lea Redmond, Ofunne Obiamiwe, and SaeRi Cho Dobson.

In October 2003, Beral Madra, founder of the 1st Istanbul Biennial, wrote regarding the 8th installment curated by Dan Cameron, entitled “Poetic Justice”. With its optimistic implications, Mrs. Madra stated that “poetic justice touches the harmony between the aesthetics of the art work and the spiritual needs… harmony reverberates optimism.”

Inspired by this phrase, “harmony reverberates optimism”, Ronald Lopez organizes this current exhibition which celebrates women and their efforts to create social change through their art form. He states, “My desire was for art that not only provokes dialogue but pushes boundaries; art that is active and penetrates society in such a way that it promotes itself fiercely and unapologetically. The works I have decided to showcase are created by women who – in the same fashion as Beral Madra, Molly Murphy MacGregor, Mary Ruthsdotter and Maria Cuevas – aggressively engage society. In each piece the line between art and social activism is blurred and the two are married in such a way that they become a powerfully provocative force.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Ofunne Obiamiwe presents her latest project, “Status of Women”, an interactive project inspired by Facebook celebrating ten contemporary women and their roles in their respective fields. Obiamiwe presents a video of a constructed forum, ten Facebook like profile pages, and an interactive component which enables viewers to comment on a “wall”, in this case a black book, all revolving around these ten women.

Lea Redmond, with her “Changing Clothes: Care Instructions/Tag Exchange”, raises long-lasting social awareness in each viewer. In her effort to “map” clothing labels, Redmond literally requires participants to cut out their own clothing tags and pin them to a map, specifically to the geographic region where the clothing article was made. In so doing, a new awareness is created of the relationship between the clothing’s origin and place of purchase. Redmond implements a minimal approach in creating a socially conscious community that pays more attention to its ecology and the societal mechanisms which exist between the “haves” and the “have-nots”.

SaeRi Cho Dobson, with her installation “7 Deadly Seams”, exposes an all too familiar industry to us, the dry cleaning business. What is presented – via typography eloquently printed onto garments covered with slick plastic and hung on typical dry cleaning hangers – are horror stories of a rapidly-growing epidemic of immigrants being ‘taken to the cleaners’ by their customers. With its title, the piece immediately recants Dante’s Inferno with a modern twist. The elegantly seductive design operates in beguiling contrast to some of the most atrocious stories. If studied closely, one cannot leave the piece without feeling sick.

Kristin Ross Lauterbach and Christina Lee Storm’s latest video art project, “Flesh”, explores how U.S. citizens participate in the proliferation of human trafficking in the United States and around the world. The 12-minute video follows three survivors from slavery to freedom. Kristin approaches her work with great conviction as she pulls open the curtain to let us see a world to which we may have otherwise been blind. With an astute and unflinching eye, and music video like editing, the viewer is taken on a journey from a candy-coated world into the underbelly of a dark and desolate reality.

Azadeh Tajpour employs a subtle approach yet devastating approach in confronting mortality in Iraq. The “Iraqi Body Count” installation, at first glance may appear to be a dark room filled with rubbish, thousands of random strips of paper. Upon further inspection, however, one realizes that each strip has a name, a gender, an age and/or a job description. These words describe those that have been killed during the occupation of foreign enterprises upon Iraqi soil. Tajpur’s piece urges not only an intellectual, but more so a psychological, emotional and physiological response from the visitor regarding the accumulation of data spread across the floor and strategically placed on the gallery wall.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Ronald Lopez is an artist and curator with a devotion to emerging art, social justice, and alternative explorations. He specializes in creative access and traverses through social networks. Lopez has produced provocative art for more than a decade and has helped to implement city art programs in Los Angeles and Istanbul, Turkey.

While in Istanbul, Lopez founded and developed the Aden Art Center (March 2002), a national, non-profit creative center for young and emerging artists. The Center featured an international program that included an artist-in-residence program and an exchange component for festivals.

Highlights from his curatorial practice include “And That’s How it Ended?” / “The Divorce Show” (2007) at McNish Gallery, Oxnard, CA; “Does Religion Kill?” (2006) at 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA, also showcased as a parallel exhibition during the 9th Istanbul Biennial in (2005); and “Behind These Walls” (2006) at Self-Help Graphics, Los Angeles, CA.

Lopez has also participated in public art forums at the Arts Initiative Symposium in Yokohama, Japan; Alliance for Artists Communities’ annual conference at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and at the Res Artis’ annual conference at Museo Tamayo in Mexico City.

Lopez is a recipient this year of a NAMAC Fellowship. He presently serves as the Program Coordinator at 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, California.

Key Highlights:

* Facebook reporting nearly 45.3 million active US users in the last 30 days
* Facebook growing in every age/gender demographic. Fastest growing segment: Women over 55, up 175.3% in the last 120 days.
* Facebook growing faster with women than men in almost every age group. Women comprise 56.2% of Facebook’s audience, up from 54.3% late last year.
* 45% of Facebook’s US audience is now 26 years old or older.

More:

Overall, women now outnumber men in every age group on Facebook. In total, women now make up about 56.2% of Facebook’s US audience, up from 54.3% late last year. Women most outnumber men in the 18-25 and 26-34 age groups, where there are 1.4 females for every 1 male on Facebook.

The obvious question is, why? More from InsideFacebook.com

Via ABC News:
Bra Color Status on Facebook Goes Viral
Women Post Bra Colors, Sizes and Saucy Comments to Raise Awareness for Breast Cancer

The trend seemed to have started with a chain e-mail that asked women to forward it to all the female friends in their address book.

“Some fun is going on….just write the colour of your bra in your status..just the colour, nothing else, and send this on to ONLY girls no men… it will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before the men will wonder why all the girls have a color in their status…thanks ladies!”  Read the entire article.

The Facebook phenomenon has allowed you to reconnect with your best friend from elementary school, keep up with your buddy’s travels and get out of hours-long phone conversations with your aunt. It truly is a remarkable tool. However, as with most things, there is a dark side to Facebook. While your male brain may not have tapped in to the full manipulation potential of this seemingly innocuous social networking tool, chances are several of the women you know have. Women are trained in the art of creating, maintaining and controlling relationships, and Facebook is just one more resource they can use to keep tabs on and influence people. Here’s a list of some crazy things women do on facebook.

Read More

SHOW DESCRIPTION:
McNish Gallery, Oxnard College, has asked guest curator Ronald Lopez to put an all women show together for the month of March, 2010. For this occasion Lopez has decided to bring attention to a group of women who deal with issues of social justice, human frailty and global awareness in a show entitled Harmony Reverberates Optimism.

Artist’s include:
SaeRi Cho Dobson
Kristin Ross Lauterbach & Christina Lee Storm
Ofunne Obiamiwe
Lea Redmond
Azadeh Tajpour

Considering the recent woes of our nation, including recession and war; fear and despair might characterize the average American household. Thus, Lopez has decided to curate a show that brings about social awareness and, in turn, can lead to actions that build hope for the future. His aim is to be a positive voice in a sea of pessimistic prognosticators.

Harmony Reverberates Optimism opens to the public on Wednesday, February 24, 4-6pm at Oxnard College’s McNish Gallery and will run from February 24th through March 24th, 2010. Included in the show will be video stills from emerging documentary filmmakers Kristin Ross Lauterbach & Christina Lee Storm who will present “Flesh,” a narrative on women caught in America’s sex trafficking business. SaeRi Cho Dobson’s sculptural installation, entitled “7 Deadly Seams,” is an installation that reveals some of the most revolting lawsuit actions brought against the local “mom and pop” style dry cleaning businesses across our country. Other works include Iranian artist Azadeh Tajpour, who presents subtle installations of shredded paper strewn across the ground that have printed on them the various names of those who have lost their lives in Iraq as well as Ofunne Obiamiwe’s “Status of Women,” an interactive project inspired by Facebook that celebrates contemporary woman and their leading roles in their respective fields. And finally, Lea Redmond attempts to raise social consciousness in her project that “maps” clothing labels around the world. Each of these women brings a passion that seeks to push the envelope in an effort to bring about positive change.

Artist’s Talk:
Wednesday, February 24, 2010 at 4:30pm

Film preview and discussion:
“Flesh”
Discussion with Kristin Ross Lauterbach and Christina Lee
Friday, March 12, 2010 at 7pm

Please check out the website for other exhibit related projects at http://www.adenistanbul.net/harm_rev_opt.htm
or call the gallery for more info.: (805) 986-5800, ext. 1929 (please call to make an appointment)

Drinks provided by IZZE Sparkling Juice

Investigating issues of territorialization, gender identity and social class at the intersection of culture, art and technology, “Status of Women” presents profiles of ten diverse women artists living in Los Angeles gleaned from the artist’s Facebook network. The title is a play on ideas, exploring how far women have come at this point in the 21st century—examining the actual condition of women in contemporary society—in relation to what women literally post on their Facebook “walls” as status messages.

Although social networking via the internet purports to be open and democratic, it also entails inherent constraints. In effect, with responses limited to a specific number of typed characters, one is enjoined to share one’s thoughts and feelings in language wherein expressive restrictions apply, by virtue of having to utilize only a certain number of words often addressed to a selective number of interlocutors. And this begs further reflections:

How does the content that women choose to post on Facebook index the current condition of women in contemporary society? With the Facebook page serving as a virtual “room of one’s own” for many women, is their engagement in social networking predicated on the sense (or semblance) of empowerment that it may afford, beyond the expectations of one’s social role? Such questions, as well as considerations of the differential levels of participation, types of interactions, communities, collaborations, and self-construction that women engage in via Facebook, remain intriguing concerns and are deserving of serious exploration.

Featured artists are: Amitis Motevalli, Erika E. Reynoso, Flora Kao, Linda Kunik, Marjan Vayghan, Marissa Mercardo, Michiko Yao, Raksha Parekh, Yong Soon Min and Zeal Harris.
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Status of Women Gallery