VIGNETTES + GRAMMA PRESENT ‘A LONE’
A CITY-WIDE EXHIBITION OF EMPATHETIC VOICES AND WORD-BASED CREATIONS
“LONELINESS IS PERSONAL, AND IT IS ALSO POLITICAL. LONELINESS IS COLLECTIVE; IT IS A CITY. AS TO HOW TO INHABIT IT, THERE ARE NO RULES AND NOR IS THERE ANY NEED TO FEEL SHAME, ONLY TO REMEMBER THAT THE PURSUIT OF INDIVIDUAL HAPPINESS DOES NOT TRUMP OR EXCUSE OUR OBLIGATIONS TO EACH OTHER. WE ARE IN THIS TOGETHER, THIS ACCUMULATION OF SCARS, THIS WORLD OF OBJECTS, THIS PHYSICAL AND TEMPORARY HEAVEN THAT SO OFTEN TAKES ON THE COUNTENANCE OF HELL. WHAT MATTERS IS KINDNESS; WHAT MATTERS IS SOLIDARITY. WHAT MATTERS IS STAYING ALERT, STAYING OPEN, BECAUSE IF WE KNOW ANYTHING FROM WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE US, IT IS THAT THE TIME FOR FEELING WILL NOT LAST.”
– OLIVIA LAING, THE LONELY CITY: ADVENTURES IN THE ART OF BEING ALONE
‘A LONE’ IS A SERIES OF PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS OF AUDIO AND VISUAL WORKS EXPERIENCED THROUGHOUT THE CITY OF SEATTLE DURING THE MONTH OF MAY 2018.
EXHIBITING THE WORKS BY THE FOLLOWING LOCAL AND INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS:
ALEXANDRA BELL (NY)
LAURA SULLIVAN CASSIDY (SEA)
YRSA DALEY – WARD (UK)
LEENA JOSHI (SEA)
TOMMY PICO (NY)
ALYSON PROVAX (PDX)
MARTINE SYMS (LA)
GRAMMA AND VIGNETTES FIRST CAME TOGETHER OVER A MUTUAL RESPECT FOR EACH OTHER’S PRACTICES, A SHARED LOVE OF ART AND POETRY AND A BELIEF THAT WHILE THOSE MEDIUMS ARE OFTEN DEFINED AS SEPARATE, THEY SHARE AN INTERSECTION OF EMPATHY.
OVER MONTHS OF CONVERSATIONS, THE VIGNETTES AND GRAMMA TEAMS DREAMED UP AN IDEA WHERE ARTISTS WHO THINK LIKE POETS AND POETS WHO THINK LIKE ARTISTS FIND A HOME TOGETHER IN THE OPEN CITY. WE SOUGHT ARTISTS WITHIN AND OUTSIDE OF SEATTLE, AND THROUGH FUNDING AND SUPPORT BY THE BILL AND RUTH TRUE FOUNDATION, WE BROADENED OUR SCOPE. WE ENVISIONED WORKS SKY-HIGH ON GIANT BILLBOARDS, PROJECTING THEIR MESSAGE TO AS MANY PEOPLE AS POSSIBLE. WE PURSUED STRUCTURES WITHIN THE CITY THAT NORMALLY SERVE AS ADVERTISEMENT SPACES, AND OUR ARTISTS CONSIDERED WHAT MESSAGE THEY WISHED TO BROADCAST. THIS MONTH-LONG EXHIBITION OF WORDS AND IMAGE, SOUND AND SILENCE, NEARNESS AND DISTANCE IS MEANT TO CONFIRM THAT YES, YOU ARE ALONE BUT WE ALL ARE. WE ARE IN THIS LONELY CITY TOGETHER.
Image: Alyson Provax, Untitled, GIF , 2017
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Alyson Provax, Untitled (only one), 2017
Leena Joshi, Will the last bad bitch leaving Seattle – turn out the lights, 2018
Martine Syms, Nite Life, 2015
Tommy Pico iLONE, 2018
Alexandra Bell, Charlottesville, 2017
Alyson Provax, Untitled (everything), 2017
Laura Sullivan Cassidy, Broken Languages, 2017
Yrsa Daley – Ward, My destiny is louder than my comfort, 2018
Special thanks to Bill and Ruth True, Cold Cube Press, Anne Fenton, Drew Scott Swenhaugan, Mount Analogue, Photographic Center Northwest, and Shoestring Press
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Alexandra Bell
Alexandra Bell is a multidisciplinary artist who investigates the complexities of narrative, information consumption, and perception. Utilizing various media, she deconstructs language and imagery to explore the tension between marginal experiences and dominant histories. Through investigative research, she considers the ways media frameworks construct memory and inform discursive practices around race, politics, and culture. In her current series, Counternarratives, Bell edits New York Times articles, altering headlines, changing images, and redacting text to reveal oppressive patterns in news reportage and society at large. Her work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, We Buy Gold, Koenig & Clinton Gallery, The Nathan Cummings Foundation, Atlanta Contemporary, and Usdan Gallery. Bell holds a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities from the University of Chicago and an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University. She lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
Laura Sullivan Cassidy
Laura Sullivan Cassidy is an image- and experience-focused writer and editor applying experimental fiction and personal narratives to various mediums including audio, video, performance, and print. She lives and works in Seattle, WA.
Leena Joshi
Leena Joshi is a visual artist and writer born to Indian immigrants. Her writing and art explore the relationship between the self and structures of gender, sexuality, labor, and livelihood through negotiations of text, image, music, performance, and installation.
Alyson Provax
Alyson Provax is a printmaker and an animator. She was born in California in 1984 and lives and works in Portland, Oregon. She has shown regionally at Upfor Gallery, Bridge Productions and the Whatcom Museum, nationally at A.I.R. Gallery and The Untitled Space in New York, and internationally at the Blueproject Foundation in Barcelona. Recently her work appeared in articles about artists’ responses to the 2016 election in New York Magazine, Newsweek and ArtSlant. Her next solo show is at Wolff Gallery, opening May 4, 2018.
Tommy Pico
Tommy “Teebs” Pico is author of the books IRL (Birds, LLC, 2016), winner of the 2017 Brooklyn Library Literary Prize and a finalist for the 2018 Kate Tufts Discovery Award, Nature Poem (Tin House Books, 2017), a finalist for the 2018 Lambda Literary Award, Junk (forthcoming 2018 from Tin House Books), the zine series Hey, Teebs and the chapbook app absentMINDR (VerbalVisual 2014). He was the founder and editor in chief of birdsong, an antiracist/queer-positive collective, small press, and zine that published art and writing from 2008-2013. He’s read for New York’s iconic Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, the KGB reading series, and Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) amongst many others, and has been profiled in Nylon, the New York Times, and the New Yorker. Originally from the Viejas Indian reservation of the Kumeyaay nation, he now lives in Brooklyn where he co-curates the reading series Poets With Attitude (PWA) with Morgan Parker at the Ace Hotel, co-hosts the podcast Food 4 Thot, and is a contributing editor at Literary Hub.
Martine Syms
Martine Syms is a conceptual entrepreneur based in Los Angeles. Her artwork has been exhibited and screened extensively, including recent presentations at Karma International, Bridget Donahue Gallery, the New Museum, Kunsthalle Bern, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Index Stockholm, MOCA Los Angeles, MCA Chicago. Martine has lectured at Yale University, SXSW, California Institute of the Arts, University of Chicago, Johns Hopkins University, and MoMA PS1, among other venues. From 2007–11. She directed Golden Age, a project space focused on printed matter and recently founded Dominica, a small press dedicated to nowhere shit.
Yrsa Daley – Ward
Yrsa Daley-Ward is a writer and poet of mixed West Indian and West African heritage. Born to a Jamaican mother and a Nigerian father, Yrsa was raised by her devout Seventh Day Adventist grandparents in the small town of Chorley in the North of England. She splits her time between London and New York.
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