ARCTIC BOOK CLUB: ARTISTS RESPOND TO AN AFRICAN IN GREENLAND

September 18—October 24, 2009

Artists: Amber Cortes, Jenelle Covino, The Green & Bold Coöperative, Katerina Lanfranco, Fabienne Lasserre, Valerie Piraino, Greg Pond, Annie Reichert, Julian Rogers, Ranbir Sidhu, Christopher Ulivo

Curated by: Jean Barberis, Artistic Director, Flux Factory Michelle Levy, Program Director, EFA Project Space

Flux Factory and EFA Project Space are proud to present Arctic Book Club, on view from September 18 through October 24, at EFA Project Space in Manhattan. Curated by Jean Barberis and Michelle Levy, this exhibition is the result of a several-month long process embarked on by a group of artists responding to the book An African in Greenland.

By partnering with Flux Factory on this exhibition, EFA Project Space furthers its goal to provide a space for collaboration with other art and cultural organizations, thus bridging gaps in the art community and expanding audiences for the arts.

Tété-Michel Kpomassie's book, An African in Greenland, serves as memoir, ethnography, and travelogue, and is the account of the author’s unique journey from his native Togo to

Greenland. As a young man living in Africa, Kpomassie happened across a children’s book about Greenland. Fascinated with the distant Arctic island, he embarked on a remarkable tenyear journey across Africa and Europe, working as a translator along the way, and eventually saving enough money to complete his odyssey and live in Greenland.

In the Spring of 2009, Flux Factory and EFA assembled a cross-disciplinary group of artists to respond to Kpomassie’s book, meeting regularly in the form of a book club. Upon completion of the book, the artists were then asked to create new work inspired by their internalization of Kpomassie’s narrative and the resulting discussions.