A Non-Place in A Space
Postcommodity
A Space Main Gallery
March 31 – May 16, 2015
Public Programming on Friday April 10, 3 PM with Raven Chacon and Kade L. Twist moderated by Elwood Jimmy. Discussion takes place in the Mediatheque, Urbanspace Gallery at 401 Richmond Street West, Ground Floor.
A Space Gallery and the Image Festival proudly present A Non-Place in A Space. In this exhibition New Mexico based collective Postcommodity (Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez, Kade L. Twist and Nathan Young) reconsiders our understanding of communities and geographies by connecting Indigenous narratives with the rights of cultural self-determination. Bringing together two multi-channel video installations, Gallup Motel Butchering (2011) and It’s My Second Home, But I Have a Very Spiritual Connection With This Place (2010), the projects speak to the notion of the non-place within white cube galleries, washing out each wall with colonized landscapes and global market forces that define our social and political languages and imaginations. Challenging the notion of what “non-place” has historically meant for settlers and colonizers in their perceived terra nullius, this exhibition asks what is the connection between land, culture, and community.
Public Programming Friday April 10, 3 PM: Moderated by Elwood Jimmy, Postcommodity’s Raven Chacon and Kade Twist will discuss their artistic practice, which promotes a constructive discourse that challenges the social, political and economic processes that are destabilizing communities and geographies; and connect Indigenous narratives of cultural self-determination with the broader public sphere.
Biographies
Postcommodity is an interdisciplinary arts collective comprised of Raven Chacon, Cristobal MartiÃ��Ã�ÂÂnez, Kade L. Twist and Nathan Young. Postcommodity’s art functions as a shared Indigenous lens and voice to engage the assaultive manifestations of the global market and its supporting institutions, public perceptions, beliefs, and individual actions that comprise the ever-expanding, multinational, multiracial and multiethnic colonizing force that is defining the 21st Century through ever increasing velocities and complex forms of violence. Postcommodity works to forge new metaphors capable of rationalizing our shared experiences within this increasingly challenging contemporary environment; promote a constructive discourse that challenges the social, political and economic processes that are destabilizing communities and geographies; and connect Indigenous narratives of cultural self-determination with the broader public sphere. Postcommodity are the recipients of grants from the Telluride Institute (2007), American Composers Forum (2008), Arizona Commission on the Arts (2009), Elly Kay Fund (2010), Joan Mitchell Foundation (2010), Creative Capital (2012), Art Matters (2013), and the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (2014). In 2011 the collective’s work was featured in Close Encounters, an international Indigenous exhibition exhibited in multiple venues throughout the city of Winnipeg, CA; Contour the 5th Biennial of the Moving Image in Mechelen, Belgium; Nuit Blanche, Toronto, CA; Half Life: Patterns of Change, Santa Fe Art Institute, Santa Fe, NM; The Night is Filled With the Harmonics of Suburban Dreams, Lawrence Art Center, Lawrence, KS; Here, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts Museum; 18th Biennale of Sydney in Sydney, Australia; Adelaide International in Adelaide, Australia; and Time Lapse, Site Santa Fe, in Santa Fe, NM. In 2013, Postcommodity will exhibit their work at the Headlands Center for the Arts, as well as open their art space, Spirit Abuse in Albuquerque, NM. Throughout 2015, Postcommodity will prepare to stage a site-specific 2 mile long land installation at the US./Mexican border near Douglas, AZ.