Perhaps Home is Not a Place

Artists in the Exhibition: Juan Barroso, Arleene Correa Valencia, Lucy Kim, Aida Lizalde, Carmen Lizardo, Sharon Norwood, Jada Patterson, Ashlyn Pope, Moises Salazar

The boundaries of home can be defined in many elusive and impermanent ways - through community, culture, family, or place. How we feel about home can oscillate between a place of belonging, comfort, and security, as well as danger, disconnection, and longing. The title of this exhibition is inspired by a quote from James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room: “Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.” Using these words as a guide, viewers are asked to consider our collective relationship to home, and whether it is something obtainable. Perhaps Home is Not a Place features works by artists of color who focus on many aspects of how we must navigate our bodies, histories, and identities within these United States.

The artists in this exhibition create works with direct depictions of the figure, remnants of the body, or objects as metaphor for the body. Through each technique, we can contemplate how bodies are seen or not seen, how history lives on in the present, and how home is not always a physical place we can inhabit. For example, Lucy Kim’s Malik with Toy Eyeballs #1 is a playful image of a child with toys. Our understanding of the work is deepened by her technique which uses the pigmentation of the body to create screen prints. She explains, “By developing a unique process for creating images with melanin produced by live, genetically-modified bacteria cells, I am exploring human pigmentation and the disingenuous use of vision to justify racial inequities.” Ashlyn Pope’s A Birth of a Nation: When Cotton was King depicts the flag of the United States with brown ceramic cups painted red, white, and blue. The cups become a metaphor to address the past and present, as well as how black bodies were used in America for labor to build the economy, but quickly discarded until their labor was needed again. Arleene Correa Valencia’s Capturados: Pajaros en Vuelo 1997/ Captured: Birds in Flight 1997 is made of repurposed family clothes and depicts the outlines of three children below, and three colorful birds above. As a native Mexican who grew up in the US, her work explores the experience of child migration through textile art and challenges notions of belonging and acceptance. Throughout this exhibition each artist expresses their autonomy and vulnerability to convey connection to home, place, time, and the many histories we all carry in our day to day lives.

Gallery hours are 11-4 weekdays, 1-3pm weekends, and will be closed during university breaks.