Conflictual Distance

As part of The Immigrant Artist Biennial 2023: Contact Zone

November 16, 2023 - January 6, 2024
Opening Gathering: November 16, 6-8 PM

Gallery closed for the holidays:
November 23-26, 2023 & December 23-31, 2023

Artists
Golnar Adili
Marcelo Brodsky
Pritika Chowdhry
Erika DeFreitas
Maria Kulikovska
Keli Safia Maksud
Emilio Rojas
Mila Panić
Jovencio de la Paz
Nida Sinnokrot
Slinko
Rafael Yaluff

Curators: Bianca Abdi-Boragi, Katherine Adams, and Anna Mikaela Ekstrand

Conflictual Distance probes concrete approaches to presenting distant conflicts to local publics. The exhibition considers conflict through the lens of political exile and cultural diasporas, focusing on immigrant artists’ experimental approaches to processing distant conflicts in local contact zones. When exhibitions are so often asked to carry out various forms of site-specific placemaking, called on to speak to an immediately present public, how can we make visible those experiences that are not fully legible from within an exhibition site's immediate surroundings? Whether the conflicts they address are personal or collective, each artist in Conflictual Distance tackles how the mediation of distant conflict pushes images to their infrastructural limit. Confronting the risk of their references becoming dislocated and decontextualized – misunderstood in their “foreign” setting – the media in these artists’ works become modes of inscribing “elsewhere” here, where we find ourselves in the present. The cumulative effect of such exercises is to fashion a layered sense of place that can tackle critical issues, unbound to strict divisions between locality or foreignness.

The second edition of TIAB: Contact Zone centers U.S. and international immigrant and exiled artists, and explores how storytelling, embodied memory, and projections of diasporic futures can be strategies for straddling different cultural and political terrains. TIAB 2023, co-curated by Katherine Adams, Bianca Abdi-Boragi and Anna Mikaela Ekstrand, presents: Contact Zones (exhibitions), Field Work (panels), and Arena (performances and screenings), taking place across seven venues, including: Brooklyn Museum, EFA Project Space, NARS Foundation Gallery, Artists Alliance Cuchifritos Gallery + Project Space, Wendy’s Subway, Alchemy Gallery, and Accent Sisters in addition to a Field Guide (catalog), from September 8 2023 - January 2024, presenting 48 artists from over 35+ countries.

Public Programs:

Opening Gathering

Thursday, November 16, 6-8 PM

Taking into consideration the events around the world, and particularly in countries of conflict and war, EFA Project Space and The Immigrant Artist Biennial offer this time and space for people to convene. 

In person at EFA Project Space
323 W 39th St, New York, NY 10018
Free and open to the public.

Field Work
Online Roundtable: “Ukraine, Making Art in Times of War”

Saturday, November 18, 1-2:30 PM

An online roundtable on the war in Ukraine with Maria Kulikovska, Slinko, and Berlin-based curator Valeria Schiller as speakers moderated by Katya Grokhovsky.

Online Event - Join via Zoom
Free and open to the public.

Arena
Performance: Emilio Rojas: “Open Wound: A Gloria”

Saturday, December 9, 2023, 5-6:30PM

A performance work by Emilio Rojas as part of an ongoing yearly project where he dry tattoos the US-Mexican border on his back.

In person at EFA Project Space
323 W 39th St, New York, NY 10018
Free and open to the public.

Stop by! Poster Making Workshop, Brownies & Tea

Closing Event, Saturday, January 6, 2024, 4-6 PM

Co-organized and facilitated in collaboration between The Immigrant Artist Biennial team and EFA Project Space staff, this workshop invites participants to create their own poster in relation to current events. To accompany the workshop brownies and tea will be provided.

In person at EFA Project Space
323 W 39th St, New York, NY 10018
Free and open to the public.

Marcelo Brodsky, Kingston, 1968 from the series 1968, Fire of Ideas, 2016, Overwritten photograph, 24.5 x 36.5 inches (framed). Courtesy of the artist, Henrique Faria Fine Art, and Galeria Karla Osorio.

Keli Safia Maksud, They Try Their Tongues, 2022, Light, sound and sculptural Installation, dimensions variable. Photos by Mike Hall.

Mila Panić, Burning Field, 2017, HD video projection, 01:46:00 minutes.

Exhibition Photography by Julia Gillard

Left to right:

Mila Panić, Burning Field, 2017, HD video projection, 01:46:00 minutes; Pritika Chowdhry, Memory Leaks: Drips and Traces, 2014, Etched copper pots, burnt newspapers and books, and water, 120 x 120 x 120 inches; Emilio Rojas, Open Wound: A Gloria, 2023, Two-sided risograph print, 17 x 11 inches. Edition of 500; Erika DeFreitas, Her body is full of light (often, very often, and in floods), 2016, single-channel video, 04:22 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and Christie Contemporary; Marcelo Brodsky, Montevideo, 1968 from the series 1968, The Fire of Ideas, 2016, Overwritten photograph 29.5 x 39.5 inches (framed). Courtesy of the artist, Henrique Faria Fine Art, and Galeria Karla Osorio.

Image Description: Installation view of the gallery. A burning field is projected onto a large wall. Behind, copper pots are hung from the ceiling, with brown bowls on the floor below the pots. In the back is a white pedestal with a stack of papers, a video on a monitor, and a framed photograph on a wall to the right.

Slinko, Everything Must Go, 2019-present, HD video and sound, 14:00 minutes.
Jovencio de la Paz, Uneven Mound, 2022, Jacquard and handwoven textile, and cotton, 72 x 84 x 1.5 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Chris Sharp Gallery.

Image Description. A video with headphones plays on a monitor, and a large mounted orange/gray textile hangs on the wall.

Left to right:

Rafael Yaluff, Latin American Ghosts, 2022, Oil and Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 48 inches; Pritika Chowdhry, Memory Leaks: Drips and Traces, 2014, Etched copper pots, burnt newspapers and books, and water, 120 x 120 x 120 inches; Keli Safia Maksud, They Try Their Tongues, 2022, Light, sound, and sculptural Installation, dimensions variable; Maria Kulikovska, From the series 888, 2018, Watercolor on architectural paper, 11.4 x 8.2 inches (each); Maria Kulikovska, From the series my beautiful. Wife?, 2014, Watercolor on architectural paper, 11.4 x 8.2 inches (each); Maria Kulikovska, From the series my beautiful. Wife?, 2018 ,Watercolor on architectural paper on mat board, 15 x 12 inches; Maria Kulikovska, From the series Saga about pregnant me and my pregnant husband, 2021, Watercolors on medical examinations, 11.4 x 8.2 inches; Golnar Adili, Pink Letter, 2011, 23 enlarged and transferred reproductions of a letter on paper, medical tape, and museum board, 18 x 24 x 1.5 inches; Slinko, Everything Must Go, 2019-present, HD video and sound, 14:00 minutes; Jovencio de la Paz, Uneven Mound, 2022, Jacquard and handwoven textile, and cotton, 72 x 84 x 1.5 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Chris Sharp Gallery.

Image Description: Installation view of the gallery. A large blue and black painting hangs on the wall. Three white fabric scrolls on metal stands glow with orange light. On a wall in the middle of the space, red and brown figures are sketched on watercolor hung on the wall. In the back right, A video with headphones plays on a monitor, and a large mounted orange/gray textile hangs on the wall. In the foreground, copper pots are hung from the ceiling, with brown bowls on the floor below the pots.

Left to right:

Marcelo Brodsky, Amsterdam, 1967 From the series 1968, The Fire of Ideas, 2016, Overwritten photograph, 24.5 x 36.5 inches (framed). Courtesy of the artist, Henrique Faria Fine Art, and Galeria Karla Osorio; Marcelo Brodsky, London, 1968 From the series 1968, The Fire of Ideas, 2015, Overwritten photograph, 26 x 38.5 inches (framed). Courtesy of the artist, Henrique Faria Fine Art, and Galeria Karla Osorio; Marcelo Brodsky, Washington, 1968 From the series 1968, The Fire of Ideas, 2015, Overwritten photograph, 29.5 x 39.5 inches (framed). Courtesy of the artist, Henrique Faria Fine Art, and Galeria Karla Osorio; Marcelo Brodsky, Rio de Janeiro Passeara Dos Cem Mil I, 1968 From the series 1968, The Fire of Ideas, 2015, Overwritten photograph, 24.5 x 36.5 inches (framed). Courtesy of the artist, Henrique Faria Fine Art, and Galeria Karla Osorio; Marcelo Brodsky, Kingston, 1968 From the series 1968, The Fire of Ideas, 2016, Overwritten photograph, 24.5 x 36.5 inches (framed). Courtesy of the artist, Henrique Faria Fine Art, and Galeria Karla Osorio; Rafael Yaluff, Latin American Ghosts, 2022, Oil and Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 48 inches.

Image Description: Five framed overwritten archival photographs hang on the wall. A large multicolored painting is on the right wall.

Emilio Rojas, Open Wound: A Gloria, 2023, Two-sided risograph print, 17 x 11 inches. Edition of 500.
Erika DeFreitas, Her body is full of light (often, very often, and in floods), 2016, Single-channel video, 04:22 minutes. Courtesy of the artist and Christie Contemporary.

Image Description: A white pedestal with a stack of prints, and a large monitor playing a split-screen video of two people in white shirts.