Image from Saya Woolfalk's infinity loop HD video projection "Aya (from the Empathic Universe, portrait of the artist's daughter)."
To Be—Named Exhibition
Friday, September 1, 2023 – Saturday, October 14, 2023
Opalka Gallery at Russell Sage College in Albany, New York
Opening September 8 at Opalka Gallery, Albany, New York
The Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network (EHCN) invites the public to its art exhibition To Be—Named, at Opalka Gallery at Russell Sage College in Albany, New York, with an opening reception on Friday, September 8.
To Be—Named is a partnership between the Experimental Humanities Collaborative Network, the Recovering Voices program at the Smithsonian Institution, and the European Union-funded CoLing project.
The exhibition was created by EHCN in collaboration with Opalka Gallery in Albany, New York, and is dedicated to the topic of naming and the significance of names for the development or suppression of a person's identity. The exhibit in New York's Hudson Valley is the second station of an international project that includes exhibitions on the same theme in Germany, Greece, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Palestine, Republic of Sakha (online), and the US.
Names can make ancestry and knowledge of one's mother tongue visible. They are something very personal, but they can also be something very political, as the abuse of power can be exercised through naming.
The exhibition consists of six artistic conceptions from the US, which will be shown at all four locations and supplemented by local conceptions. With this approach of bringing together local and international artists, the show aims to promote a dialogue among the participating artists with different experiences and world views, as well as with the audience. In addition, specific discourses on the exhibition theme in the respective countries will also be addressed.
The works of Jenny Irene Miller, Luz María Sánchez, Bently Spang, Keith S. Wilson, Elizabeth Withstandley, Saya Woolfalk, and zhaoyuefan will be shown at all exhibition venues. They deal, among other things, with the loss of identity when names are translated into another cultural context and with the efforts of Indigenous cultures in North America to manifest their claim to cultural identity and attachment to territorial homelands through names and naming.
Through paintings, installations, films and photographs, the artists featured in the Albany exhibit address the traces of colonial history and colonial injustice that have manifested themselves over decades through naming, image appropriation or one-sided forms of historiography.
Featured artists:
Aarati Akkapeddi
Birding the Future (Krista Caballero and Frank Ekeberg)
Jeremy Dennis
Ellen Driscoll
Jenny Irene Miller
Native Land Digital
Luz María Sánchez
Jean-Marc Superville Sovak
Bently Spang
Sayo’:klʌ Kindness Williams
Keith S. Wilson
Elizabeth Withstandley
Saya Woolfalk
zhaoyuefan
Exhibit location:
Opalka Gallery
Russell Sage College
140 New Scotland Ave.
Albany, NY
Dates: Sep 1 - Oct 14
Exhibit hours:
Tuesday–Saturday 12–5pm
open late Thursday 12–8 pm
Opening Reception: Friday, September 8, 6–9 pm.