JUNE AT AITA: SYMPATHETIC MAGIC, June 5 – 28, 2009
Please join us this Friday, June 5, 2009, 6-8pm, when guest curators, Courtney Dailey and Jackie Clay present Sympathetic Magic, an exhibition of digital media inspired by An Artwork in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin. Artists include Amy Lockhart, Rio Robbins, Jen Smith and Jacolby Satterwhite.
Sympathetic Magic
June 5 – 28, 2009
Opening: June 5, 6-8pm
Lantern Launch: June 6, 7:30pm
Location TBA at Opening
Sympathetic magic is the belief that one thing or event can affect another at a distance as a consequence of a sympathetic connection between the two. The works in this exhibition propose a different way of relating to the world, eschewing models of consumption in favor of interdependent, global relationships that challenge capitalist conventions. From different locations around the world, the four artists’ work disrupts traditional narrative structures and constructs a meandering and complex understanding of landscape, self, and fellow beings.
Inspired by Walter Benjamin’s call to politicize the practice of art in An Artwork in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, the show’s curators have chosen temporal works in which the artists have created their own politicized rituals. The value of these works is determined not by market pricing, but by the relationships built within the context of the works.
Jen Smith is a cultural producer/ dilettante who has been dabbling across mediums for the past twenty years. Presently, she makes sculptures, performances, photographs and paintings investigating cultural mythologies, nationalism and sexuality. She toured for several years as a performer and organizer of the Cha Cha Cabaret, and as a member of the band, The Quails. In 2009, she received her MFA from the University of California, Irvine.
Jacolby Satterwhite is an artist working primarily with performance and video and is currently an MFA candidate at the University of Pennsylvania. His work uses the intersection of private constructions, reflexive histories and public disruption. His video presents his fantastical intervention in shared public space and insistence on matrilineal connection. He has performed at PS.1, Exit Art (NY), and received the Grand Prize at the Smithsonian Institute’s S. Dillon Ripley Center in 2007, after receiving his BFA at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
Amy Lockhart is a filmmaker (primarily animator) and artist. Her artwork and award winning films have been exhibited internationally. Amy has educated herself through attending the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, completing an artist residency at the Quickdraw Animation Society and completing a fellowship at the National Film Board. She has received international acclaim, speaking and exhibiting her work at various art institutions including a residency at The California Institute of the Arts and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, as a visiting artist instructor.
Ruth Robbins is a nomadic artist and ceremonialist currently based in Oakland, originally from New York and most recently relocated from New Orleans. Trained as a lighting designer, her practice currently includes explorations of loss, astronomy, photography, theater design and directing, Andean indigenous ceremonial techniques, and leading a clandestine star gazing society. She earned her BA from Oberlin College. She has participated in numerous group shows, notably at the Arthur Rodger Gallery in New Orleans, received a Kennedy Center Production Grant and her images have been featured in Harper’s Magazine.
