Artists Tamaribuchi, Valenzuela, and Wall speak to the elusive sense of identity in the immigrant experience, integral and unprescribed by a singular homeland. In this young country, Both Sides Now is a story touching every family. Generation after generation, we re-negotiate who belongs and who does not. From unique vantage points, these evocative works create tangible realities of emotional complexities.
Shaped by Bangladesh’s Liberation War in 1971, Rohena Alam Khan creates as her father once raised his rifle, each layer a battle cry for freedom. War brought her into being, as it brought her parents together – the child of a freedom fighter and a political refugee. Now a woman of modern Bangladesh and the world, she engages the revolutionary spirit she was endowed with at birth. In this solo exhibition, Alam Khan worships the brave women who came before, as she shares her inspired journey. Art is both refuge and weapon in her own fight against oppression.
In dialogue, the works of Philippe Hyojung Kim and Birthe Piontek underscore the essential impermanence of our existence through a subversion of the traditional still life. The disintegration of our nourishment and the natural acts as a gentle reminder of our own make-up: flesh will turn to dust. Piontek tells us the nature of the organic is transformation. While Kim serves us plastic, prepared to outlast the dinner and the diner. Seemingly, meaningful change may only occur alongside temporality. In this moment of shared instability, we are offered the choice to embrace a state of flux. It’s here we find our humanity.
To create the world of our dreams, we first have to dream it. RYAN! has given us this vital space, for sharing in the work of hopeful imagining. As in street art and scribbled messages on bathroom stalls, here, too, we are all artists. Informal public art reveals our universal and innate creative spirit. We are called to echo the petroglyphs and rock face paintings of our ancestors, the very existence of which provides evidence of the evolutionary necessity of art, and its power in constructing community. Unifying for a better world is an act of resistance against the high pitch of fear and anger. May our creative collaboration provide a better outlook.
