"THE EXALTATION OF
LIFE AND DEATH"
"EXALTACIÓN DE
LA VIDA Y LA MUERTE"
double exposure
The manipulated photographic prints in this exhibit express the baroque beauty of everyday mundane existence and the cosmic awe in our disintegration.
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This exhibition proposal combines the work of Jod Lourie and Ri Anderson, two women artists from the United States who live and work in Mexico, and whose imagery is very much influenced by the art and culture of that country.
Being residents of both Mexico and the United States for the last thirteen years, Lourie and Anderson experienced the very deep connections that the two countries have on them through the dual lives that they choose to live.
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At this time of polarizing politics that are trying to rip us apart and deny our mutual dependency and commonality, cultural connections like this exhibition make us feel that our common bonds as human beings are one of our best weapons against the primitive cult of otherness.
ABOUT EXHIBITION
"The Exaltation of Life and Death" combines two exhibits, Ri Anderson's "Blood of my Blood" ("Sangre de mi Sangre") and Jod Lourie's "Waking from the Dream of Death: the transubstantiation of the mummies of Guanajuato" (Despertando del Sueño de la Muerte), both of which have been showing at museums in central Mexico during the last few years.
Jod Lourie has used astrobiology research in "Despertando del Sueño de la Muerte" ("Waking from the Dream of Death") which has determined that all of the elements on Earth, including ourselves, was cooked up over time by nuclear reactions inside stars. Our death, then, is the breaking apart of our essential elements, which return to the cosmic soup and will resurrect into new life over and over again. The mummies in her prints have been refused this process and through this series of altered photos she has used her own images of the Guanajuato mummies, combined with photos of the known universe from the NASA Hubble telescope, and has attempted to return them back into the deep space that is their mother...
In Ri Anderson's "Blood of my Blood" (Sangre de mi Sangre), she creates montages based on her experience birthing and raising daughters as a single mother in Mexico. Her work is about creating life, sustaining life, and then separating from those lives little by little. She photographs herself and her two daughters in Renaissance-inspired tableaux, and she generates forms based on Mexican-Catholic symbols by compiling photographs of her and her daughters' bodily cast-offs.
The images in this exhibit are mirrors into the great mysteries of life and death. Andersons' work, explicitly about life, implies the little deaths experienced in everyday life through mother-daughter relations. Lourie's work, explicitly about death, implies scientific evidence of dead matter gaining new life.
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Shown together, the proposed exhibition deals with the dilemma of bringing life into this world and leaving this world... and offers a way to transport viewers out of the ordinary, mundane, and fearful existence into an imaginary world of the magic of science, awe, and trascendence.
THE ARTISTS
JOD LOURIE
Research in astrobiology has determined that all the elements on earth, including ourselves, was cooked up over time by nuclear reactions inside stars….our death then is the breaking apart of our essential elements, which return to the cosmic soup and will resurrect into new life over and over again……
The mummies have been refused this process and through this series of altered photos I used the my own images of the Guanajuato mummies and the photos from the NASA Hubble telescope of the known universe and have attempted to return them back into deep space that is their mother….
In these altered photographs I tried to express the feelings I had when I moved to Mexico and saw the mummies in Guanajuato for the first time ..….they seemed trapped between heaven and earth, in that they were never allowed to disintegrate back into their essential makeup and join the natural order of things….
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RI ANDERSON
Ri Anderson was born in Boston MA and spent her childhood mainly in New England. She received her MFA in photography from Massachusetts College of Art in 2005 where she studied with Abelardo Morrell, Laura McPhee, Frank Golke, Nick Nixon and others. Prior to that she worked as a freelance photographer with clients including the DeCordova Museum, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Senator Paul White, and various institutions and visual artists. She taught at a variety of universities and schools including Massachusetts College of Art, the Boston Photo Collaborative, and the DeCordova Museum School.
Anderson’s work has shown at numerous museums and galleries in the US, Canada and Mexico including Museo de la Ciudad de Querétaro (Qro., MX), Museo de Bellas Artes (San Miguel de Allende, Gto. MX), Galería Intersección (San Miguel de Allende, Gto.), Griffin Museum DSI (Belmont MA), Fuller Museum (Brockton MA), DeCordova Museum (Lincoln MA), Photographic Resource Center (Boston MA), Bernard Toale Gallery (Boston, MA), Gallery Nord (San Antonio, TX), and Galeria 6 (Pozos, Gto., MX), among others. Her work is in the permanent collection of the DeCordova Museum. Her work has been published in Printmaking Today (UK) and BETA-Developments in Photography (Australia). It has been reviewed in publications including Art New England and Art Papers. She has received awards from Photolucida, Massachusetts Cultural Council, the New York Times Magazine, Maine Photographic Workshops, and the Copley Society of Boston, among others.
"The Exaltation of Life and Death"
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This is an exhibition proposal for public and private spaces in Mexico and the United States.
This is a time in which both Mexico and the United States are in great need of reaffirming their close relationship with one another…a reaffirming of the economic, political, social and cultural bonds which need to survive the divisive rhetoric of the present US administration. Deepening commercial ties created a flourishing Mexican–American community in Mexico itself, one that has influenced Mexico’s culture just as much as ours. In the past two decades, Mexicans have developed a unique ethos, allowing them to feel every bit as North American as they do Latin American. It would be in our best interest not to revert to the old state of affairs.
Here lies the danger in dismantling what we’ve built over the last 20-plus years: North America today is no mere agglomeration of countries; it’s a unified continent, each of its three parts thriving off the prosperity of the whole.
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This exhibit is the collaboration of two American female artists, who live and work in Mexico and have been greatly influenced by the powerful aesthetic that shape the art of that country, with one of the historical and up-and-coming venues of contemporary art in the heart of Mexico’s capital.
CONTACT
This exhibition is represented by Viridiana Gutiérrez Tejeda
EMAIL | asart.sanmiguel@gmail.com
TELEPHONE | 52-415-126-38-87
If you have any questions and/or would like to learn more about the project please send a message.