On View: July 21 - August 18
Open by appointment only and during every 3rd Friday KCK Artwalk
Reception: July 21 (5-8 pm)
609 North 6th Street, Kansas City, KC
Curiouser & Curiouser presents Ferality in Nameless Realms, an offsite ICS exhibition co-curated by Jenn Cacciola and SK Reed featuring twenty-two artists working across disciplines, half from the larger New York area and half from the Kansas City region. Cacciola, based in New York, and Reed based in Kansas, paired artists from their respective locations to share virtual studio visits and create small collaborative works with one another. These collaborations will be shared alongside solo work by each artist, giving the viewer a glimpse of the individual inclinations at play in the generative long-distance work.
The impetus of the project acknowledges that artists and curators are navigating a late-capitalist environment, where resources are constantly shifting and little can be predicted. In response, there is a need to follow our natural tendencies towards care and community-building, which often work against most profit-driven systems. The show’s title draws inspiration from Sara Swain’s essay, Feral Hospitality:
‘Feral Hospitality’ may initially seem like an oxymoron. Hospitality, after all, is associated with home, welcoming, and belonging. Feral, by contrast, conjures all that is unhomely, unwelcomed, and does not belong. From the Latin ‘fera’, meaning wild, it designates the ‘nature’ that we left behind in order to become human (92).
Feral-ness often connotes a negatively framed separation of humans from nature, whereas Swain suggests that in becoming “human,” or in trying to make a life for ourselves within a capitalist and colonial system, we have left behind parts of our natural selves that are rooted in communal care and desire for connection. This as a different type of hospitality that is activated outside the physical home, through meeting others in a co-inhabited space where certain dynamics of ownership can be absolved. Swain encourages, “We must design strategies to live together, making and remaking hospitable places, as they continue to be unmade.”
The long-distance work between the artists and curators of this exhibition suggests a complicated realm of togetherness necessary for navigating the instability of the present. The insistence on making community regardless of concepts of space ownership and belonging is reflected throughout the history of countless artist-led movements.
Featuring work by Adina Andrus, Sibley Barlow, Summer Brooks, Tiana Nanayo Kuʻuleialoha Honda, Ruth Jeyaveeran, Elena Kalkova, Hannah Lindo, Tristan Lindo, Garry Noland, Brittany Norgia, Elinore Noyes, Natalie Jauregui-Ortiz, Allison Panzironi, Heidi Schultz, Chico Sierra, Kirsten Taylor, Emily Teall, Miyuki Tsushima, Sarah Valeri, and Robert Zurer in the main gallery, and an installation by Mary Clara Hutchison (KS) and Patricia Miranda (NY) in the Container Gallery.
Artists
Adina Andrus - Adina Andrus (b. 1980, Bucharest, Romania) makes work that confront questions of memory, belonging, and visual culture across time and space. Andrus is a recipient of the Queens Council for the Arts New Work Grant and the NY State Arts Alive Artist Grant and has exhibited work in the United States and Romania, including at the Ely Center for Contemporary Art, CollarWorks, LABSpace Gallery, GoggleWorks Center for the Arts and Make a Point Gallery. She studied art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and the Art Students’ League. Andrus lives and works in the New York area.
Sibley Barlow - Sibley Barlow explores ideas surrounding time, identity, labor, and repetition particularly as they relate to the body, and often as they relate to portals and alternate realities. Her work privileges process and seeks to consolidate performance with the object. He works across mediums and crafts, grouping work as widely varied individual projects. She works primarily in painting, drawing, performance, and installation. Sibley was born in Atlanta, Georgia and received her BFA from Ball State University. He currently lives and works in Mamaroneck, New York.
Summer Brooks - Summer Brooks is a multimedia sculpture artist in Kansas City, MO. Recently, she exhibited work at KCAC with her exhibition Wash Day in 2022. In 2021, she completed an exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis titled, The New Garden Variety. She has received NCECA’s Multicultural Fellowship award in 2021 and exhibited work in the Multicultural fellowship exhibition in 2022. Brooks was a resident at Belger Studios and is currently a ceramic resident at 323 Clay in Independence, MO.
Tiana Nanayo Kuʻuleialoha Honda - Tiana Nanayo Kuʻuleialoha Honda was born and raised on the island of Hawaiʻi in the small town of Hilo. Honda received her BA in Art with a minor in Japanese Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi at Hilo in 2019 and her MFA in Visual Art from the University of Kansas in 2023.
Mary Clara Hutchison - Mary Clara Hutchison is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Kansas City, Missouri. Her most recent projects include dis/re/member, a solo exhibition in Kansas City, Missouri. Her work explores tradition, ritual, obsession, and their intersection in our daily lives. She is a past resident at the Charlotte Street Foundation Studio Residency and a past board member of plug, Inc.
Ruth Jeyaveeran - Born in Lusaka Zambia, and raised in the Midwest, Ruth Jeyaveeran lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Drawing from her experience as part of the South Asian diaspora, she uses textiles to examine our shared ancient history to confront feelings of otherness, alienation, and dissociation. In her soft sculptures and installations, the boundary between human, animal, and flora dissolve to tell a story of isolation, migration, and evolution. The act of sewing, tying, and tangling fibers together, is an attempt to repair ruptured bonds between body, environment, and community. Jeyaveeran’s first solo show was exhibited at Field Projects in New York in March 2023. Other recent exhibitions include Felt Experience at the Brattleboro Museum, Communion at Main Window Dumbo, and Amplify, a public outdoor sculpture at the Queens Botanical Garden. Jeyaveeran has been awarded residencies at Lighthouse Works, the Jentel Foundation, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and PADA Studios. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Textile Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Elena Kalkova - Elena Kalkova is a conceptual artist and researcher of Post-Soviet Art History. In her practice she explores memory and memorilessness, state propaganda, construction of gender in the Post-Soviet space and complex relationships with home and family, especially when the home is a dictatorship. Kalkova’s research lies primarily in the field of feminist and queer art and art of resistance and translation. She holds an MA in Global Arts and Cultures from RISD and is currently working on her MFA at the School of Visual Arts (SVA).
Hannah Lindo - Hannah Lindo was born and raised in Garden City, Kansas. She completed her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at Fort Hays State University in 2017. In 2022, Lindo completed her Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of Kansas. Lindo will continue her artistic and teaching career at the University of Central Missouri as an Adjunct instructor in Painting and Drawing/Artist in Residence in the Fall of 2023.
Tristan Lindo - Tristan Lindo (1994 - ) was born and raised in Garden City, Kansas. Lindo has his BFA in Studio Art from Fort Hays State University (2018), and his MFA from the University of Kansas (2022). He currently works and resides in Lawrence, Kansas. His current body of work explores the human condition through a science-fantasy story called, ‘Xanropa’. The story is currently being expressed through paintings (gouache, watercolor, and oil paint) and a comic that utilizes stippling (pencil and micron). It is his intention to make this work as accessible to as many people as possible while creating a sense of wonder for both the fictional world and the world that we inhabit together.
Patricia Miranda - Patricia Miranda is an artist, curator, educator, and founder of the artist-run orgs The Crit Lab and MAPSpace, where she developed residencies in Port Chester, Peekskill, and Italy. In 2021 she founded the Lace Archive, an historical community archive of thousands of donated lace works and family histories. She has received grants from the Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation (2022);Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance (2021); two artist grants from ArtsWestchester/New York State Council on the Arts (2014/21); an Anonymous Was a Woman Covid19 Relief Grant (2021), and was part of a year-long NEA grant working with homeless youth (2004-5). She has been awarded residencies at the Constance Saltonstall Foundation, I-Park, Weir Farm, Vermont Studio Center, and Julio Valdez Printmaking Studio. Recent solo exhibitions include: the Olin Fine Art Center (Washington PA), 3S Artspace (Portsmouth, NH), Jane Street Art Center, Garrison Art Center (Hudson Valley, NY), ODETTA Gallery, and Maine Window DUMBO (NYC). Group exhibitions include Spartanburg Art Museum (Spartanburg, SC); Dunedin Fine Art Center (Dunedin FL); HV MOCA (Peekskill NY), and Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance (NoMAA)
Garry Noland - Garry Noland makes works on paper, drawings and sculpture from found and reused materials. The various bodies of work are a summary to him in this sense: they establish contexts for comparison with each other and enrich the choices he makes in studio. It is a day-to-day learning process that occasionally reveals moments in which a brand new work will carry him back to something from the 1990s, for instance, and he gets to say, "Oh...that's what that piece was about".
Brittany Norgia - Brittany Noriega is a visual artist whose work is deeply rooted in a fascination with the human figure and the complexities of the human psyche. Using various 2D media, she strives to capture the intricacies of the human form, emphasizing its unique beauty and vulnerability. Brittany's work is not just a representation of physical form, but a reflection of the emotional and psychological landscape that lies within. Brittany studied studio art and sociology in the Black Hills of South Dakota and is currently completing a BA in Psychology to further pursue studies in Neuroaesthetics. She is the recipient of multiple grants and awards throughout the metro arts community, including a Rocket grant from Charlotte Street, the Inspiration grant from ArtsKC, and most recently a one-year studio residency with the InterUrban ArtHouse.
Elinore Noyes - Elinore Noyes’ art is a form of existential questioning that begins with her immediate surroundings. She is interested in litter, junk, and trash. She is fascinated by the process of deterioration that occurs when an object or material is no longer deemed useful. By transforming unwanted things into works of art, her goal is to disrupt oppressive hierarchies to reveal the abundance of value, meaning, and beauty that is all around her. Her process begins with exploration. She walks around the city to collect materials and photographs from the environment. Then, back in her studio, she combines and repurposes them through physical, craft-based processes. There is a constant tension in her practice between in/out, self/other, known/unknown. The tactile, physical nature of her method carries conceptual weight. Repurposing refuse is an emotional act that represents the creation of worth from abandonment. Through meditative looking and intuitive making, she strives to take material that is “other” and make it familiar, repurposing and elevating it as an aesthetic work of art. Noyes’ work is about attempting to describe the indescribable. She is drawn to margins, edges, and boundaries. She is often trying to get outside of socially constructed frames for seeing and thinking. Her work seeks to capture concretely the process of transformation between wanted and unwanted, useful or useless, beautiful or ugly. She wants to truly know the world around her, to see beyond those many divisive dualities. Through the combination of a variety of processes and disciplines, Noyes’ work allows her to reach out into the unknown.
Natalie Jauregui-Ortiz - Natalie Jauregui-Ortiz is a Mexican-American artist from the Bay Area, painting in NYC. She holds a BA from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Exhibitions include New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) (NYC), Ortega y Gasset Projects (NYC), ABC No Rio at ChaShaMa Gallery (NYC), Ely Center of Contemporary Art (New Haven, CT), Ice Cream Social (Port Chester, NY), and more. Residencies include arts letters and numbers in Averill Park, NY, and the New York Academy of Art. She paints people as she explores storytelling, particularly focusing on underrepresented communities. She investigates themes of intimacy and belonging, isolation and otherness. While sometimes a still life painter, her paintings serve as documentaries of odd, wonky, and funky sights. She applies considerate details with brief immediacy to her work - oscillating between tight lines and abrupt movement.
Allison Panzironi - Allison Panzironi works with a variety of flexible materials like fabrics, foam and yarn because she enjoys the visual effects of something so soft and gentle seeming as fabric being combined with a violent stitch. She also works in ceramics which similarly is something that begins flexible and throughout excruciating circumstances will become structured/rigid. This transition is a concept that Panzironi identifies with and explores throughout all bodies of her work. Appearing externally soft and flexible but being held together by such harsh lines. Within these pieces there are repeating imagery of domestic scenes, either functional or not, that are pulled from memories of her childhood home or images that she has made up in her head.
Heidi Schultz - Heidi Schultz has been working in clay for 21 years. Born and raised in the midwest she developed an imagination and interest in art that blossomed in her first college ceramics class. She earned a BFA from Northwest Missouri State University in 2004 and an MFA from Kent State University in 2007. Heidi has taught art at the college level for eleven years and maintains a studio in the West Bottoms of KCMO. Her work explores Buddhism through a personal lens using ceramic sculpture, pottery and drawing. She has exhibited all over the country as well as in KC having won multiple awards at the Kansas City Clay Guild Teabowl National. Aside from art, family is most important, but she also enjoys music, golf, biking and indoor rock climbing.
Chico Sierra - Growing up in El Paso, Chico Sierra began crossing borders early. As a Mexican-American, he knows that sometimes borders can be fixed and severe, like crossing back and forth between Mexico and the United States. But oftentimes, borders are blurry or even non-existent. Sierra has moved from the United States, to Mexico, Canada, Germany, the Philippines and back. He is conscience of the flux of cultural diversity. That, in combination with the theme of blurred borders is expressed in the different mediums of Sierra’s art.
Kirsten Taylor - Kirsten Taylor is a multimedia artist based in the tallgrass prairie. Her work investigates relationships between humans and nature, and questions the assumptions of Western hierarchies that place nature in subservience to humans. Taylor’s projects focus on topics, such as habitat restoration, loss of ecological knowledge, and human constructs of wilderness. Taylor holds an MFA from the University of Kansas and a BA in Studio Art from Baylor University. Taylor has exhibited nationally at venues including 108 Contemporary, and the Leedy Voulkos Art Center. Taylor received an Artist-in-Residence position at Shawnee Mission Park with Johnson County Parks and Recreation Department in 2022.
Emily Teall - Emily Teall (BFA visual arts, Cornell University '16; MA human rights studies, Columbia University '18) is a Connecticut-based multimedia artist. Her art develops from her curiosity about and connection to nature. She navigates the themes of anxiety and memory through her artistic practice, drawing inspiration from ecological, anatomical, and biological references and processes. Teall uses her art to express and practice introspection as a tool for growth. Her art draws on natural imagery of bulbs, seeds, cocoons, and wombs to evoke a gestation period in which the viewer grows through introspection before re-emerging into the community. In 2022, Teall completed her inaugural residency at the Norwalk Art Space, where she set up her studio practice, taught art courses and workshops, and displayed her work. She has since set up a studio and is involved in the arts community of Port Chester, NY. In addition to building a personal art practice, Teall teaches a broad variety of visual art courses at various local locations. She has also taught courses and currently takes metalworking classes at the Silvermine Arts Center, where she creates large, interactive metal sculptures.
Miyuki Tsushima - (b. Fukushima, Japan) Miyuki Tsushima's works appear rather minimal, but they are loaded with emotion. On a misty, subtly tinted white background, small signs are waiting to be deciphered. In the series of work in the exhibition - ‘Eleven little soldiers’ - each piece reflects her untold stories, words that could not be found, feelings that were not digested, even though each episode might not mean anything to anyone in the end. In recent works, she uses found objects and scraps of paper for points of reference in time and space. Yet often these elements were randomly selected and scattered into the picture, then adjusted by the artist in order to make sense of them. Her art reflects the way we all cope with and process past adversity and trauma. Most importantly, though, these paintings open one's eyes to the serendipity of everyday life.
Sarah Valeri - Sarah Valeri began exhibiting paintings and drawings when she moved to New York City in 2004 to earn her MA in Art Therapy at NYU. Since then she has created self-produced exhibitions of work that explore places, memory, and various forms of soft power, as well as exhibiting work internationally. In 2018 she was invited for a solo exhibition at the Museo del Exconvento de Tiripetío in Michoacán, Mexico and returned the next year as an artist in residence at the Festival de Guitarra Paracho. She has participated in residencies at Trestle Art Space in Brooklyn, The Studios at Mass MoCA, the Post Human Artist Network, and will be developing sound based and interactive work at NAHR residency in Val Taleggio Italy this summer. This exploration promises to be more interactive than her very solitary process of painting and will combine aspects of her studio and therapy practices. Currently she is completing the Certificate Program in Painting at the New York Studio School (where she takes mostly sculptures classes). She works in private practice in Brooklyn, NY and teaches through Ohio University.
Robert Zurer - Robert Zurer is a native New Yorker who has lived and worked in New York City all his life. He recently relocated to Philadelphia where he now maintains his studio practice. He has been an active member of the NYC Crit Club since its inception in 2017. His work has been exhibited in numerous group shows in and around New York. He has also been shown in Nashville, New Haven, Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, Grand Rapids, Philadelphia and Edinburgh, Scotland.
