Flux @ Caos Gallery
923 F Street NW
Washington, DC

October 20, 2012

Reception at 7PM

In conjunction with Nuit Blanche DC, Jessica N. Bell will be presenting Flux, a temporal exhibition of time-based media, featuring artists Chukwuma Agubokwu, Lara Stein Pardo, Terence Nance, Nyugen Smith, and Mandy Cano Villalobos.

The nexus of mobility has been arguably actualized in the 21st century. In a societe contemporain, access to the world around us is seemingly within a click of a mouse. Whether one is booking tickets to an exclusive destination half-way around the world, or quelling a case of wanderlust with Google Earth; access to information, and more specifically, locales, is increasing exponentially with the advancement of technology. For some, to freely move around is a treasured luxury, yet a laborious, dangerous act for others. Flux will explore the politics of passage as it relates to movement. Social mobility. Forced migration. Geographical travel. Gentrification and displacement.

As writer Richard Florida has suggested, economic interconnectivity, realized through globalization, is certainly apparent, but has not made way for equity, especially equity in access, for various demographics of our global society. Through colored lenses, the notions of travel and mobility are heavily drawn along race and class lines. The freedom to move one’s body about, around, and between is nefariously complicit with one’s standing within a given socioeconomic sphere. Access to the freedom of mobility becomes synonymous with ability, ability transforms into a longing for the lack of such, a desire of sorts.

Flux is visualization of this transformation of mobility into a matter of access. In the exhibition, five contemporary artists will challenge understandings of travel through video works. Lara Stein Pardo, Nyugen Smith, Terence Nance, Chukwuma Agubokwu, and Mandy Cano Villalobos will investigate the politics of movement as it relates to their own aesthetic concerns.

In No Ward, a short documentary film shot by critically acclaimed filmmaker and artist Terence Nance, the artist explores the devastating implications of forced migrations affecting New Orleans natives after Hurricane Katrina. Similarly, drawing upon historical memory, cultural anthropologist and photographer Lara Stein Pardo, in collaboration with Grace Sanders, attempts to parse out answers to complicated questions surrounding the relationship between migrations, the legal system and everyday life in the video work today we are leaving. The video questions the role of regulation and movement, directly challenging the history of the Wet Foot Dry Foot policy addressing the illegal immigration of Cubans and Haitians into Miami.

The cultural assemblages of performance artist Nyugen Smith offer a conceptual departure from other works. Smith’s video performances construct a visual framework to navigate contemporary concerns with colonialism in the West Indies and Africa. In Americans, Mandy Cano Villalobos presents a fragmented narrative of three Latin American immigrant families and their relocation experiences. Chukwuma Agubokwu’s performance in Metro-Sketch: Thank You Come Again explores movement hyper-locally; the short video piece unveils the negotiation of interpersonal relationships on the DC Metrorail system.

Flux champions the crucible of mobility and access- technology, to magnify the bifurcated effects of globalization, regulated movement and in some cases, social stagnancy. More poignantly, Flux employs the gaze of other-ed individuals to make document existing social attitudes about the power and agency associated with physical, social, and psychological change.

For all press inquiries, please contact:

Jessica N. Bell

jessica.n.bell@gmail.com

Flux @ Caos Gallery Features Terence Nance

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Flux @ Caos Gallery Features Terence Nance

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