CLAIM THE BODY: HEALING & AUTONOMY

August 11 - October 27, 2022

VAE Cube Gallery

228 Fayetteville St

Raleigh NC 27601

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Claim the Body: Healing & Autonomy comes at a time when discourse related to autonomy is more important than ever. As rights continue to be stripped from the lives of people globally, VAE understands the importance of sensitivity regarding this subject matter. It is not our intention or goal to highlight trauma and disaster, but to instead focus on network building, mutual aid support, and community engagement that can be regenerative and healing.

Claim the Body features work from 8 artists, mostly artists from our immediate local community in North Carolina. We believe that to better facilitate community building and connections it is important to lean into our local community of artists, organizers, and champions of bodily autonomy to foster support, care, healing, and understanding amongst each other.

The ways in which we exercise our autonomy are vast and distinctive. Through dress, body adornment, healthcare decisions and interpersonal relationships, individuals make daily choices about their physical bodies and lifestyles. While some of these decisions are fleeting or aesthetic, they often reflect deeply held convictions, significant deliberation, and creativity. There is power in that.

While bodily autonomy is deeply personal, it is rarely exercised or experienced in isolation. The confidants, abortion care providers, tattoo artists, organizers, doulas, mutual aid efforts, and innumerable others are critical to our choices, advocacy, empowerment, and our healing, both personal and collective. We believe that through practices of personal and communal autonomy, a higher quality of life is possible. The works in Claim the Body speak to the reclamation of the self and the body politic that happens in the struggles for autonomy.

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STEERING COMMITTEE

Candace Howze

Cassandra J. Rowe

ARTISTS

Candace Howze - North Carolina

Cara Hagan - New York

Cassandra J. Rowe - North Carolina

Gabi Magaly - Texas

Grey Von Cannon - North Carolina

Jenny Eggleston - North Carolina

Jennifer Markowitz - North Carolina

Julie Rae Powers - New York

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PROGRAMMING

SOLD OUT!

OCTOBER 15, 6 - 9PM

Portrait Party w/ Jade Wilson, and Closing Reception

Join VAE Raleigh and Durham based artist, Jade Wilson, for a special program and closing reception for Claim the Body.

About Jade: Durham artist, Jade Wilson, has worked as a professional image maker for the past eight years, spending the first half of that time as a corporate photographer and the other half defying artistic convention and upending the status quo. Their work explores what lies in the shadows behind beauty and sorrow–both personal and communal. Their raw and frequently somber style is illuminated by their Black trans identity.

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Secondhand Salon - D.J. Neon

Danielle James
January 2 - February 8, 2020

Each mass-produced item in this show was salvaged from the secondhand store or the trash and given a neon facelift. Using the imagery already inside of the painting and through pop culture references, these material mashups bring new creative life into these discarded objects. Danielle’s work provides a commentary on contemporary American consumer and social culture that invites viewers to examine their own habits.

Danielle’s exhibition in the Cube also acts as a two pronged reminder to the artist and consumer alike:

1. So many artists (who are alive and work today) could use your support much more than Hobby Lobby.

2. Mass production of objects and our cultures consumption is most certainly contributing to our global climate crisis.

Danielle is a Durham N.C. based neon bender, artist and metalsmith whose works have been exhibited internationally. She is a member of the all-women neon art exhibition SHE BENDS and is currently a 3rd-year neon apprentice under neon artist and sculptor Nate Sheaffer at Glas neon in Raleigh N.C.

The Cube is sponsored by Celito.net who make it possible for us to pay all exhibiting artists a stipend for sharing their creativity with our community.Celito.net

You thought you are the center of the universe - Jan-Ru Wan

You thought you are the center of the universe

Jan-Ru Wan
August 21 - October 5

ARTIST STATEMENT

Motherhood brought out a different perspective in my life on how we understand love. After the 2016 election, I found even newer meanings about this perspective. The current work was initiated and inspired by my own thoughts through raising my daughter. In a child’s development, I found that it is important to let the child understand the idea of “self” to develop one’s individual identity, but at the same time, it is also important to teach the child about the idea of sharing, and that we are all connected with one another in this universe.

In this world we live in, the idea of white privilege is implicitly embedded in everyday life, either we aware of it or not. Even in Taiwan where I grew up, we had only beautiful white dolls to symbolize the ultimate beauty, and white foreigners were more popular and respected in our little society. We did not know what racism was nor white superiority. This culture was such that everyone thought things were just the way they were; until one day, the perception was broken, we all woke up and we were taught that everyone was created equal, and we all collectively contribute to this beautiful world.

Letter to my daughter in the future: Dear daughter, growing up with you every minute has been the sweetest moments in my life, and we bathe you with all our love. But one day you might learn that someone would dislike you because the color of your skin, or the way you talk, or your gender, or even the name I gave you. That is ok because you are still loved. I hope that, despite these unpleasant experiences in the future, you will still have compassion in your heart, know that the universe is dependent on all living beings. Even though, you are not at the center of the universe anymore, the universe is a much more beautiful and peaceful place when we all lived in balance.

ARTIST BIO

For more than two decades, Jan-Ru Wan has been reusing found objects, especially those discarded from industrial factories, in her sculpture and installation work, re-inventing and elevating their original purpose. Her unique way of incorporating wildly diverse materials with layers of repetition and creating a space of awe is the signature of her installation works.

Throughout Wan’s career, she has participated in 28 solo exhibitions and 44 group exhibitions, including the 1st International Biennial of Casablanca at the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Art in Taiwan; the Yango-Biennial in Kinshasa, Congo, and her solo exhibition at the Mint Museum in Charlotte NC. Her work has been featured in Surface Design Magazine and Sculpture Magazine, as well as, The National Art Education Association Anthology: Globalization, Art, and Education, which devoted an entire chapter on her work. In 2006, The University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee honored Wan with the GOLD award, recognizing her as the Graduate of the Last Decade. Wan was the recipient of North Carolina’s 2008 Visual Art Fellowship. She has been awarded artist residencies in Taiwan, Thailand, Morocco, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United States.

These Things Take Time: Susan Skrzycki

These Things Take Time: Susan Skrzycki

June 26 - August 3

Opening Reception Friday July, 12th 6 - 8 pm
Closing Reception Friday August 2nd 6 - 10 pm

ARTIST STATEMENT

I create art to express ideas and emotions that cannot be expressed by other means. Due to a long love affair with dance, my artwork is often inspired and informed by movement, use of space, lighting and sound. I’m currently working in a series that focuses on vintage theaters and dancers. I’m often interested in everyday objects that tend to go unappreciated beyond their practical purpose, like zippers and lightbulbs. I’ve worked in a variety of media over the years ranging from painting and installation to performance. For the last year I’ve been working with encaustic and am thrilled by the seemingly endless possibilities this medium offers. I find encaustic media to be the ideal conduit for me at this point, as diverse memories and influences are manifested in my new work.

ARTIST BIO

Susan Skrzycki is a largely self-taught Raleigh-based artist working in a variety of media including murals, installation, assemblage, encaustic and painting. Her extensive dance background is sometimes noticeable in terms of movement, dancers as subjects, and kinetic installation. Although each medium, material and subject seem to dictate the style and approach, her work is alive with, light, texture, atmosphere and presence. Susan’s goal is to continue to push the boundaries of her abilities and knowledge while collaborating with others. Skrzycki finds daily inspiration in studying the work and life of Johann Baptist Hofner, her 2x great grand uncle, having recently traveled to Germany to investigate. Susan is currently enjoying the process of earning a Certificate of Nonprofit Management at Duke.

Sifting: Eric Kniss

Sifting

Eric Kniss
April 24 - June 8, 2019

ARTIST STATEMENT

The key concerns in my work have to do with notions of the value of physical labor, the accumulation of material as evidence of time, and challenging prevailing assumptions about material, its uses, and hierarchies of value. I have used non-traditional materials like rope, unfired porcelain pots, and clay dust (industrial Kaolin). I am interested in discovering ways that material might visually reveal (or challenge assumptions of) its own characteristics. This is accomplished by implementing simple but concentrated and repetitive physical activities like winding, sifting, stacking, or compressing, creating contextual surprise as a result of process over time. I am interested in the capacity of physical labor to generate a visceral sense of connectedness to place. The sifting of Kaolin produces a tenuous situation of delicacy and impermanence that creates tension between the embedded sense of investment and the ephemeral nature of the result.

Over time I have become increasingly aware of the performative aspects of my work and have thought long about how to open the process to viewers without sacrificing the solitary, contemplative space necessary for its making. The specifics of the Cube have allowed me to put forward one scenario as a solution. For this exhibition I have closed the gallery space to public view and used video feeds to provide viewers access to the work and the process of its making via TV monitors in the gallery and online viewing options.

The situations described above build on the work I have been pursuing for a number of years, and the use of technology that mediates the viewer’s experience of the work bring new questions into the mix that I find very compelling. For example: What is the ontological status of the object of art in the context of mediated experience? What is the nature of knowledge in an intensely mediated reality?

This exhibition has been funded in part by a Faculty Research Grant from Bridgewater College, Bridgewater VA.

ARTIST BIO

Eric Kniss earned a Master of Fine Arts from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Bethel College, North Newton KS, and an Associates of Art from Hesston College, Hesston KS. Kniss has been awarded the Joan Mitchell MFA Grant (2010) and is a fellow at the Hambidge Center for Creative Art and Sciences (2015). His work has been exhibited in various venues including the Weatherspoon Art Museum (Greensboro NC), CUE Art Foundation (NYC), Lexington Art League (Lexington, KY) and Staunton Augusta Art Center (Staunton, VA). Kniss teaches a wide range of courses in the Art Department at Bridgewater College, Bridgewater VA.

Globe by Leroi DeRubertis

GLOBE

Leroi DeRubertis
June 20 - August 11

Artist talk: Aug. 11 @ noon

ARTIST STATEMENT

Leroi DeRubertis draws small pieces with wire. She assembles them en masse, speaking to both individual and collective humanity.

Ron Lambert

Ron Lambert

Living Goodbye

December 20 - February 2

ARTIST STATEMENT: 

There are instances when the environment reminds us of our lives, such as the point at the beginning of a rainstorm when you’re not sure if you feel the water yet or not, in extreme weather when our lives are threatened, and also when we encounter something so breathtaking that for a brief moment our lives are taken off course. Art has been given the job of capturing contemporary life, providing mementos of things the culture does or should feel for. Culture moves at an exhausting pace yet it is difficult to make art about flux, to make objects and images that ask the audience to remain still in a culture which constantly threatens to pass them by. As we leave our bodies to move at the pace of progress, we pass the physical parts of life which remind us that we take up space. It is in the moments of the sublime experience that life slows down if even for a second. Art making provides me with an opportunity to explore the sublime through the construction of experiences. Art can mimic life physically; it can also mimic the experiences of life, adding interjections to remind us of the pace at which we live and how one perceives beauty and the aesthetic of contemporary life. 
 

Culture aims its efforts toward a sense of perfection. I see this in how we construct the landscape: by making it manicured we believe it is under control. The more we try to force our environment into submission, the more we are faced with the futility of imposing a system. My work is an attempt at beauty and perfection that understands the failure of that effort. I equate it to the way in which we start a process and once we are invested in it we find a problem. Instead of starting over and admitting the idea was unsuccessful, we put a patch over the issue. We start putting patches on patches and after a while the process is more about the attempts to repair than the original goal. In the end it might be the patches are more beautiful than the goal of the original plan.

I desire to artistically explore a sense of constructedness and impermanence, which remind me of our own impermanence despite the best efforts of science and medicine. While technology explains away things that were once mysteries, phenomena, or even miracles, the sight of such occurrences still inspire awe. The sublime comes from a need to be awed, a need to break routine, a need to feel there is still wonder in the world around us. As the natural environment shrinks, the sublime recedes into such miniscule events as the concentric rings formed from a drop of water, of the reflection of the sky in a puddle alongside the walkway.