TO SCATTER OR SOW: DIASPORA IN CONTEMPORARY ART Curated by Elizabeth Hoy, Beard & Weil Galleries, Watson Fine Arts, Wheaton College, September 7– October 23, 2021

AMATEUR BIRDWATCHING AT PASSPORT CONTROL and MOST OF US ARE at TO SCATTER OR SOW: DIASPORA IN CONTEMPORARY ART

To Scatter or Sow: Diaspora in Contemporary Art serves as a central event for Wheaton’s campus-wide initiative to consider Diasporas: Economies, Boundaries, and Kinship. The title of the show is taken from the Greek root of the word, and evokes not only the dispersal inherent in diaspora but also the potential for rich growth. Framing the multi-faceted idea of diasporas through the work of eight contemporary artists, the exhibition includes video, photography, painting, ceramics and text-based work. The exhibition is presented both virtually and on the Wheaton campus. Artists: Alina Bliumis, Chinatown Pretty: Andria Lo & Valerie Luu, Isabella Cruz-Chong, Patricia Encarnación, Michael Gac Levin, Jodie Lyn-Kee-Chow, Crys Yin.

Alina Bliumis, CLASSIFICATION PATTERNS: CHRISTIAN, MUHAMMAD, LEE Curated by Irena Popiashvili “Ў” Gallery of Contemporary Art, Minsk, Belarus October 9 – October 31, 2019

The “Ў” gallery of contemporary art is pleased to present a solo-exhibition by the Belarus-born artist, Alina Bliumis. The artist was born in Minsk, but she received her education in New York and has exhibited extensively in the US and in Europe. This is Bliumis’ first solo exhibition in her native Belarus. 

The title of the exhibition refers to the artist’s 2018-2019 text-based series Most of Us Are. This 12 part work describes how “most of us” are born, believe, worship, don’t eat, consume, own, lose, dream, and spend our lives. Bliumis used statistics, demographic research and opinion poll data to define the main characteristics of a global citizen, and then construct a verbal portrait of “the most typical person.” Statistically, it is correct that “most of us are named Muhammad, last name Lee.” But as Stamatina Gregory noted in her text on Bliumis’s work (Political Animals, Aperto Raum, Berlin, 2018), “no citizen of the world cobbled together from shared demographic data truly exists.” And Bliumis’ statistic-based text portraits are anything but typical. Classifying, researching, collecting and creating new patterns of order is essential to the artist. 

To create the series entitled Amateur Watching at Passport Control, the artist studied all 195 passports currently in circulation worldwide. She dissected the symbolism of the coats of arms featured on the covers, and identified four major categories: plants and trees, birds, big cats and weapons.  From Lebanon’s cedar to Mauritius’ dodo,  to Georgia’s lions and East Timor’s AK 47, the four works in the series, Amateur Bird Watching at Passport Control, Amateur Cat Watching at Passport Control, Amateur Flora Watching at Passport Control and Amateur Arsenal Watching at Passport Control (2016-2019), bring to life this curious intersection between nationalism and nature. 

The exhibition also includes the works: My Soviet Childhood, He and My Soviet Childhood, She,2018. Bliumis created them together with her long time collaborator, Jeff Bliumis. The diptych comprises a collection of postcards of Soviet movie stars from the late 1960s through to the 1980s that he built up during his childhood.  The artist says “the series is dedicated to all Soviet-era children who collected stamps, postcards, pins, cigarette and match boxes, soda bottles, candy wraps, juice box stickers” during that time.  There is an implied association between identifying the symbols on modern passport covers and the curious eye that encouraged the collection of Soviet movie star postcards. Having past experience of this common childhood pleasure, of creating and curating collections of day-to-day objects, is essential in understanding both Most of Us Are and Amateur Watching at Passport Control series. 

In My Soviet Childhood, He and She, the artists are trying to create a portrait of the most typical Soviet-era movie star. But there is a reverse process underway in Amateur Watching at Passport Control. Alina Bliumis is grasping the bigger picture of different coats of arms and dissecting them into their visual parts. 

The exhibition is made possible by the generous support of the Trust for Mutual Understanding and the Franklin Furnace, NY

COSMOPOLITICS, COMRADESHIP, AND THE COMMONS, Shelter festival, Helsinki, Finland Curated by Corina L. Apostol, Ksenia Yurkova and Anastasia Vepreva June 7-9, 2019

EXPLORING ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY, ECOFEMINISM, QUEER ECOLOGY AND ECOLOGICAL RESILIENCE THROUGH KEY PROJECTS BY INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS, SOME ON VIEW FOR THE FIRST TIME IN FINLAND.

This year the festival will consider some of the most pressing issues of our times under the conceptual umbrella of eco-feminism, queer ecology, environmental philosophy, and ecological resilience. Entitled "Cosmopolitics, Comradeship, and the Commons" the 2019 festival-laboratory will feature diverse works including performance, installation art, poetry, film screenings, as well as discussions, artistic research, and an online publication bringing together artists and cultural practitioners from the Scandinavian countries, the Baltic Region, Eastern Europe, Russia, and beyond. Drawing on Isabelle Stengers' concept of "Cosmopolitics," where diverse stories, perspectives, and practices connect to lay the foundation for new strategies and radical possibilities, the Festival will act as a temporary commons for diverse approaches to the ecological crisis and its economic, social, and cultural affects and effects.

The festival invited artists, activists, educators, musicians, and all cultural producers in the greater Helsinki area and beyond to propose projects at the intersection of deep ecology, climate resilience, environmental philosophy, ecofeminism, and socially engaged practice.

Russian performative and experimental musical collective Techno-Poetry (Roman Osminkin, Anton Komandirov, Marina Shamova); Sweden-based art-collective HAMNEN (artist and filmmaker Klængur Gunnarsson; artist Maria Safronova Wahlström; artist Josef Mellergård; award-winning filmmaker, journalist and writer Johannes Wahlström); ex-academic turned video essayist Natalie Wynn based in the US; artist, activist and filmmaker Oto Hudec based in Slovakia; collaborating Romanian artists Anca Benera and Arnold Estefan; artist and filmmaker Oliver Ressler based in Austria; curator and art critic Raluca Voinea based in Romania; Sami artist, author and journalist Máret Ánne Sara based in Norway; Polish poetic choreographer, performance maker, curator of experiences Valentine Tanz/ Vala Tomasz Foltyn based in Denmark; UK-based art historians and curators Maja and Reuben Fowkes; and Belarusian-American artist Alina Bliumis are amongst this year's participants.

More than 20 participating artists, musicians, curators and theoreticians were selected via an international open call: Anna Sopova and Antanas Jatsinevichys (Russia); Inês Tartaruga Água (Portugal); Ipek Burçak (Turkey); Collective HEXY (Justyna Jakóbowska, Roksana Kularska-Król, Justyna Stopnicka) (Poland); Lea Roth (Germany); Laurene Bois-Mariage (Finland); Maria Veits (Russia/ Israel); Andréa Stanislav (US); Axel Straschnoy (Finland); Vo Ezn (Georgia); Mathilda Franzén (Sweden); Natalia Skobeeva (Russia/ Belgium); Rabota (Marika Krasina & Anton Kryvulia) (Germany/ Belarus); Roman Golovko (Russia); Silvia Amancei and Bogdan Armanu (Romania); Susi Disorder (United Kingdom); Saša Nemec (Slovenia/ Finland); Taisia Korotkova (Russia); Valerii Shevchenko (Russia); Vera Kavaleuskaya (Finland/ Belarus); Verneri Salonen (Finland); zh v yu (Natasha Zhukova, Katya Volkova, Dasha Yurychuk) (Russia).

The festival also presents the Suoja/Shelter Reader, a compilation of educational materials in conversation with the performances, art installations, films, music, and discussions taking place throughout the festival. The Reader has been put together by the festival curator and organizers. The reader also contains a themed glossary of terms.

Suoja/ Shelter is held at the Space for Free Arts under the Auspices of the University of the Arts Helsinki (UNIARTS). It is supported by the City of Helsinki, the Finnish Cultural Foundation (SKR), and the Arts Promotion Center Finland ( TAIKE). Spanning three full days of programming between June 7-9 at the public shelter turned into the Space For Free Arts/ Vapaan Taiteen Tila in the Sörnäinen neighbourhood of Finland's capital, the festival is free and open to the public. It is curated by Corina L. Apostol, an independent curator and writer based in New York/US and Constanța/Romania, together with artist and curator Ksenia Yurkova (Finland/ Russia) and artist and curator Anastasia Vepreva (Russia).