New exhibits opening Friday in Zilkha Gallery

MIDDLETOWN — Saint Louis-based multimedia artist Kahlil Robert Irving is curating the second exhibition at Wesleyan University’s Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery this fall, “This Country,” and a series of video screenings, “Mapping Energies,” in the South Gallery and Zilkha Room 106, located at 283 Washington Terrace on the Wesleyan campus in Middletown, Connecticut, from Friday, Oct. 26 through Sunday, Nov. 18.

New extended gallery hours are Tuesday and Wednesday, 12-5 p.m., Thursday, 12-7 p.m., and Friday through Sunday, 12-5 p.m. Admission is free and open to the public.

“Street Matter — Decay & Forever / Golden Age,” Kahlil Robert Irving’s first solo exhibition in New England, is on view in the adjacent Main Gallery, including several pieces commissioned by the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery.

The “Mapping Energies” videos will be screened this Friday, Tuesdays, 12-5 p.m., and Thursdays from 12-7 p.m. through Nov. 15.

An opening reception is scheduled for Friday at 12:15 p.m. Danielle A. Jackson, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance Art, The Museum of Modern Art, who is writing an essay for the upcoming catalogue for the “Street Matter — Decay & Forever / Golden Age” exhibition, will be in conversation with Kahlil Robert Irving at the opening reception.

“This Country” and “Mapping Energies” are organized by the Center for the Arts. The exhibition and its accompanying events were made possible by support from Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts; the Hoy Family Fund; and the Creative Campus Initiative.

In “This Country” and “Mapping Energies,” works by 15 artists encompass a range of practices and media, and diverse cultural ties from around the world.

The exhibition “This Country” uses the flag as a model for accessing the complex discourse around present day civil rights. The artists included all live in the United States, and the works included represent thoughtful, relevant, and unique statements on the use of a flag as a reference, motif, and symbol. “This Country” visualizes the power of the flag as these artists touch upon personal narratives, issues, and symbols of what it means to live and work in the United States. Works are included by artists Modou Dieng, Addoley Dzegede, André Filipek, Ari Fish, Rashawn Griffin, Andy Li, Patrick Martinez, Catalina Ouyang, Edward Salas, Aram Han Sifuentes, and Edra Soto.

Working through different archives, monologues, and collage, the works in the series of video screenings “Mapping Energies” show the complicated nature of what it means to be Black and of the African Diaspora. All works presented respond to the news media, and representations of both current and past events. The works enact a memorialization of past documentary technologies and a simultaneous focus on how reinterpretation interacts with what people see. Two alternating presentations of videos are shared by artists Ja’Tovia Gary, James Maurelle, William Morris, and Saliou Traoré.

Kahlil Robert Irving was born in San Diego, Calif. in 1992. He attended the Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Art, Washington University, in Saint Louis (M.F.A., 2017) and the Kansas City Art Institute (B.F.A., Art History and Ceramics, 2015). In 2017, Callicoon Fine Arts mounted his first solo exhibition in New York, Streets:Chains:Cocktails. Since then, his work has been included in exhibitions at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park, Kansas; the Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles; Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, New York; and Saint Louis University, among others. This year, his works will be included in group exhibitions at the RISD Museum, Rhode Island; Jenkins Johnson Projects, Brooklyn; and i8 Gallery, Reykjavik, Iceland. He was recently the Artist in Residence/Visiting Professor at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois, and the 2017–2018 Alice C. Cole Fellow at Wellesley College, Massachusetts. He is currently the Robert Turner Teaching Fellow at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University in Alfred, New York. His work is in the collections of the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas; the Riga Porcelain Museum, Latvia; J.P Morgan Chase Art Collection, New York; The Ken Ferguson Teaching Collection at the Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, Missouri; the Foundation for Contemporary Ceramic Art, Kecskemet, Hungary; and the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design, Jerusalem, Israel.

Danielle A. Jackson is Curatorial Assistant, Department of Media and Performance Art, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Prior to her appointment at MoMA, she was the Mellon Interdisciplinary Fellow at the Walker Art Center, working closely with former Curator-at-Large Adrienne Edwards on the Jason Moran exhibition, publication, and live performances. Formerly, she was the 2015–16 Friends of Education Twelve-Month Intern in the Department of Media and Performance Art at MoMA. From 2015-16, she worked closely with Thomas J. Lax to produce Projects 102: Neïl Beloufa, and a monograph on choreographer and visual artist Ralph Lemon—the first in the Museum’s new Modern Dance series. Before that, she worked with SFMOMA and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on Public Intimacy Art and Other Ordinary Acts in South Africa (2014), Collaborative Intervention: Chimurenga Library (2014), and Radical Presence: Black Performance in Contemporary Art (2015), among others.

For more information, call 860-685-3355, or visit http://www.wesleyan.edu/cfa.