On these cold winter days, it’s a wonderful thing to get warmed up with an intelligent art exhibition. There’s much to choose from on campus these days! In the Zilkha Galleries, you can find Audible Bacillus, a contemporary art show that explores co-evolution, decay, revival…and much more. Here’s an official description: “What does it mean for our world concept, language, ethics, and knowledge, if we accept that human bodies co-evolved with their microbiomes? Audible Bacillus posits a reconnection of our consciousness from the inside out, presenting our coexistence at a metaphoric register rather than representing or speaking for the beings within us.”
In the gallery at the College of East Asian Studies, you can see some extraordinary landscape photographs of Korea by Young-Il Kim. The website tells us that “Sound of Korea presents five landscape photographs by Young-Il Kim as well as two single-channel videos. His photography became well-known when he did some official photography related to the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. The exhibit was curated by Phoebe Junghee Shin, ‘P 17.”
In a few days you will be able to find animals in the Davison Art Center. Bestiary opens on February 7 with a gallery talk by University Professor Kari Weil, the exhibit “blends moralizing tales, natural history, and fascinating images of non-human animals to astonish and entertain. We continue to regard beasts in similar ways—as emblematic devices for understanding our world and ourselves. How we define the non-human can shape our conceptions of what it means to be human, our codes of morality and ethics, our ideas about rights and obligations.”
Are you away from Middletown? I was in New York this week and had the good fortune to see an exhibition co-curated by Ahmed Badr ’20 at the Juilliard School of the performing arts at Lincoln Center. Unpacked is a moving, beautiful and haunting show that humanizes the refugee experience with installations and recordings that testify loss and resilience. You can read more about the show here.
Also in New York, next week painting professor extraordinaire, Tula Telfair, has a solo show of her new landscape paintings opening at Forum Gallery at 475 Park Ave and 57th. Reverie continues the artist’s exploration of memory, imagination, dreams, emotions and place, and I can hardly wait to see it!
And if you are reading this in Los Angeles, why not go see the extraordinary young alumnus/artist Cameron Rowland’s (’11) show at the Museum of Contemporary Art. D37 draws our attention to racism and property, politics and property. When you pay attention, you may think, when you think, you may act…
I’m sure there’s more in the Wesleyan world, but this should help keep us warm for a while.