emotion
Dawn Black, Victoria Dugger, Raheleh Filsoofi, Jiha Moon, Judy Rushin-Knopf, Tori Tinsley, Mie Yim
Curated by Jiha Moon & Veronica Kessenich
Laney Contemporary, Savannah
September 17 - November 2, 2024
Laney Contemporary presents emotion, a group exhibition guest curated by artist Jiha Moon and art historian and curator Veronica Kessenich, founder of CARCIOFI and former director of Atlanta Contemporary.
The selected artists, named below, are Moon and Kessenich’s response to an oft-spoken truism that women are emotional ... and not in a good way. Effectively, the friendship of these two curators – and their shared histories of having to be quietly demonstrative – inspired a collaboration to exhibit art by women at a woman-owned gallery, that astutely plays to the clichés while eviscerating women’s socially prescribed ‘role.’
In September of 2022, Jiha Moon and Veronica Kessenich talked about a not-so-distant past when their lives were fundamentally different. Marriages and moves, departures and opportunities (and the need to remain ‘professional’ through it all) highlighted the fact that women often ‘suppress’ to ‘succeed.’ Jiha Moon soon identified seven artists (a number which is linked to intellect and not emotion) who represent the duality of what it means to exist today.
Empowering both individuals and groups is of special interest to Dawn Black. Her use of collected source material, as seen in her Conceal Project: For and Against Grabbers and First Rebels Descending, takes on perceived gender roles, the mythology of women (as creators and destroyers), and the necessity to transcend proscribed constraints. Utilizing gouache, ink, and watercolor, her works on paper invoke a thunderously quiet protest.
Mirrors and the human gaze offer Victoria Dugger the opportunity to present viewers with newly perceived realities. Her worldview as a disabled Black woman informs her richly layered surfaces, beautifully rendered anthropomorphic figures, and lumpy sculptures adorned with the trappings of femininity. The strength of Victoria Dugger’s imagery emerges from her visions of alternate worlds, ones in which ambiguity and experience lead the audience to places where the grass may be a little greener.
The physical bite of artist Raheleh Filsoofi is her act of resistance and resilience. She uses her own body, hands, and mouth to transcend the colonialism, history, and labor of clay. She slowly, methodically, sinks her teeth into clay artifacts that she makes, leaving a permanent mark as protagonist, antagonist, observer, and participant in the narrative of life.
Reappropriating and reconsidering Eastern and Western motifs, including Keanu Reeves, the color yellow, Roy Lichtenstein’s brush stroke, Buddhas, peaches and fortune cookies, is both a modus operandi and an oversimplification of the technical genius in Jiha Moon’s work. Her paintings and ceramics do not fit within any defined canon. Jiha effectively acts as cartographer, charting her own journey from immigrant to citizen, daughter to mother, student to teacher. Her playfully fierce works resist simple definitions – getting to know her is akin to finding the key on the map.
Instability, balance, and the energetic continuum are represented through three textile works by artist Judy Rushin-Knopf. Her Vital Signs series came about at a time of suspended reality where the illness of a loved one, combined with the trauma of the pandemic, necessitated an exploration in materiality. Using cloth, which can be read as both comforting and oppressive, her works evoke the importance of time and its numerous stages.
Often using imagery from her children’s drawings, Tori Tinsley’s paintings and sculptures traverse childhood innocence alongside the caregiving roles essential to daughter and mother. Her Sleepers series, presented in this exhibition, utilizes bold and expressive painting techniques to represent the uninhibited demands of giving, receiving, and the ultimate loss of love.
Mie Yim’s paintings navigate abstraction and representation, her imagery seemingly lacking focal points while achieving connections. Her visual vocabulary is informed by her childhood trauma as an immigrant. Her iconography of bubbles, crevices, excavations, and blankets, combined with gutsy color choices and supernatural creatures, are intended to overwhelm and disorient. By extending her marks to the edges of the paper she allows no room to breathe, no space to relax. Just a fascinating discomfort.
These seven artists are expressive, aggressively colorful, and boldly shy. Their emotion vibrates with the energy of who they are as mothers, daughters, teachers, people of color, and immigrants.
About the Curators:
Veronica L. Hogan (née Kessenich) is a museum director, curator, art historian, educator, collector, former art dealer, fundraising consultant and writer. Drawn to the history of art at a young age, she became fascinated with the language of art (color, line, shape, form … ) and the inspiration behind artists and their works. She earned an M.Phil in Art History from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland (2004) and her BA in Art History from Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN (2001) and has taught since 2006 at Agnes Scott College (Atlanta), SCAD-Atlanta, the Art Institutes of Atlanta and Decatur, and has lectured at the University of Georgia, Emory University, Oglethorpe University, and others.
Jiha Moon is from DaeGu, Korea and lives and works in Tallahassee, Florida. She received her MFA from the University of Iowa and is currently Assistant Professor of Art at Florida State University. Her works have been acquired by Asia Society, the High Museum of Art, the Mint Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institute, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Weatherspoon Museum of Art, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. She has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, the Taubman Museum of Art, the Mint Museum of Art, and the Cheekwood Museum of Art, among other places. She has been included in group shows at the Kemper Museum, the Fabric Workshop and Museum, the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Asia Society, The Drawing Center, White Columns, Smith College Museum of Art, and the Weatherspoon Museum of Art. She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2023.
LANEY CONTEMPORARY
1810 Mills B. Lane Blvd, Savannah, Georgia 31405
