Big eyes

Installation shot of Timothy Hyunsoo Lee's gookeyes (portraits of anxiety II), 2015.
Image: Eshan Vasudeva

It took some time to sink in…our proposal had been selected and we were to curate an exhibition at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery in New York. For three students in the Masters program at Columbia University, this was a huge step in our curatorial ambitions. Were we excited? Yes. Daunted? A little.

My co-curators, Vivian Chui, Doris Zhao and I had presented a proposal on issues of race and identity politics explored through the work of young contemporary artists. And when we chanced upon the poem 'People' by Harlem Renaissance poet Jean Toomer, we had the perfect title–a curious blindness.

Through the work of 18 artists, the exhibition confronts the institutionalized racism that permeates daily through media, consumer capitalism and the art-historical canon. The show is particularly relevant for its interrogation of the notion of an ostensibly post-racial era—an environment free of racial discrimination and prejudice. As evidenced by the contemporary political climate however, this post-racial dream is far from being realized. Our artists and the chosen works challenge the deeply entrenched racial and ethnic stereotypes that continue to be globally disseminated.

The scaled model we built of the Wallach Art Gallery. Image: Tara Kuruvilla

From idea to white cube

The proposal we submitted in March 2014 included a scaled model that we built with the help of Sonia Turk, an architect friend. Once our idea was selected, Deborah Cullen-Morales and Jeanette Silverthorne of the Wallach Art Gallery guided us over the year in developing a floor plan that was not just theoretically driven, but also logistically feasible. We worked extensively with Google SketchUp, the 3-D modeling software of choice for curatorial projects, which allowed us to experiment with different permutations for the space. It was at this stage that structural limitations came into play and part of the curatorial process was to collaborate with the gallery to find creative solutions.

Timmy Hyunsoo Lee at work during a studio visit. Image: Tara Kuruvilla

Artists at work

Studio visits were undoubtedly one of the most exciting parts of the curatorial process—Doris, Vivian and I visited artists across the country to select work for the exhibition. Timothy Hyunsoo Lee, pictured above, has an incredible space in the artistic district of Williamsburg, and we stopped by to watch him work on dojakki, prayers to a pig's head, a new edition of which was created especially for a curious blindness!

The watercolor artist graduated from Wesleyan University with a degree in neuroscience, drawing and developmental biology, and incorporates his background in science into the exploration of his identity as a Korean-American grappling with a history of anxiety disorders. A section of the exhibition explores the idea of repetition as a means for artists to process and confront internalized crises of representation. Timothy's labor-intensive studios sessions, in which he spends anywhere between four to twenty hours painting in an almost trance-like state certainly speaks to this idea.

Installation week at the Wallach Art Gallery. Image: Tara Kuruvilla

Installation week arrived and the gallery was abuzz with art handlers—all working around the clock to have the exhibition ready in time for the opening. It was incredible to see the ideas envisioned on paper take shape within the gallery space. Seen above are works by Divya Mehra, Ahmed Mater, Sondra Perry and Firelei Báez in the process of being installed. 

Installing Divya Mehra's There are Greater Tragedies at
the entrance of the Wallach Art Gallery.
Image: Tara Kuruvilla

A curator's walkthrough

Let me take you through a few works in the exhibition. Before even entering the gallery, the viewer is confronted by Divya Mehra's There are Greater Tragedies. An artist who divides her time between Winnipeg, Delhi and New York, Divya notes that her work often deals with her personal (yet overwhelmingly relatable) struggle with her diasporic identity, as well as the subversion of imposed cultural expectations. The Columbia MFA alum works in a wide range of media—video, photography, film, installation and sculpture—and her sense of humor and marked irreverence permeates easily through each of these different forms.

What drew us to this particular piece was Divya's choice of text as a medium. By making her work impossible to pigeonhole within assumptions based upon gender or ethnicity, the artist subverts the popular tendency to situate works by Indian artists within a culturally specific discourse.

Young Women Sitting and Standing and Talking and Stuff (No, No, No), 2015. 
Performers: Joiri Minaya, Victoria Udondian, and Ilana Harris-Babou. Image: Sondra Perry

Another young artist featured in the show, Sondra Perry, is particularly interested in working with digital imagery to delve into what she terms "slippages of identity," and her practice explores issues of abstraction of marginalized people within a historical, political and social context. Sondra developed a performance piece for the opening night of the exhibition titled Young Women Sitting and Standing and Talking and Stuff (No, No, No). The performance took place in the building lobby, and several curious onlookers gathered around the three intriguing characters as they debated, joked and interacted amongst themselves, seemingly oblivious of their audience. 

Girl (Chitra Ganesh + Simone Leigh) My dreams, my works must wait till after hell…, 2011
Image: Video still courtesy the artists

The politics of visibility is similarly addressed in this video installation titled My dreams, my works must wait till after hell… (2011). The artistic duo Girl is comprised of artists Simone Leigh and Chitra Ganesh, each of whom explore the historical and popular representations of the female form within their own practice. The video takes its title from a poem of the same name by Gwendolyn Brooks, the first African-American to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize. In this collaboration, the pair employs the visual vocabulary of the canon to confront the conventional art-historical depiction of the female nude.

The video focuses in on the sinuous torso of a dark-skinned woman, positioned in a manner reminiscent of the classical pose of the odalisque. Her turned back denies the viewer access to any identifying physical traits; she breathes evenly despite her head being buried beneath a heap of rocks. There is a curious interplay between strength and vulnerability in Girl's contemporary presentation of the black body; the reexamination of the traditional nude subverts a complex hegemonic history associated with the form.

Installation shot of a curious blindness. Image: Tara Kuruvilla

Much to our excitement, a curious blindness has been well received—reviewed by the Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Holland Cotter in The New York Times where it was named "Critic's Pick" in the weekly art listings, as well as featured in Artinfo and the Village Voice. Do stop by the exhibition if you're in New York this summer.

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University is open from Wednesday-Saturday, from 1-5 pm. a curious blindness is on view until June 13, 2015. 

(Tara Kuruvilla is a graduate student with research interests in colonial studies, the politics and practices of museum displays, and modern and contemporary South Asian art. She holds an M.A. in Modern Art: Critical and Curatorial Studies (MODA) from Columbia University. She will be joining the PhD program in Art History at Columbia University this fall.)