The first exhibition of CONNECT, Roots & Culture’s new curatorial residency, “Care” is both a rehearsal and a performance, but it is more of a poetic and unfolding proposition than it is an experiment. Curated by Risa Puleo, the contemplative group show has an interdisciplinary focus that yields to a diverse and deeply subjective experience, meditating on what it means to move independently in public and private space.
Much of the exhibition takes cues from choreography and sound. Park McArthur is prominently featured; with Constantina Zavitsanos, their collaboration “Score for Before” is a large wall-text piece that describes how to care for two or more people. Another piece of McArthur’s, “Carried and Held,” resembles an overly detailed didactic text for an artwork displayed in a museum, but is actually a list of names of those who have held the artist when transferred from a wheelchair.
Elsewhere in the gallery is the site-specific score “Feel It For Me” by Carolyn Lazard, which guides the reader through experiencing the artist-selected texts that are placed beneath it on the entry bench. Video of the performance “Clean 1” by Sarah Sudhoff gives witness to the artist thoroughly bathing the sink of a morgue. Sculptural pieces include Harriet Sanderson’s beautiful and precarious work, “Tilt,” and Carmen Papalia’s thirty-foot-long walking cane, “Long Cane.” Papalia also exhibits documentation of the demonstration “White Cane Amplified,” wherein the artist transverses Vancouver with a bullhorn and repeats, “I can’t see you,” acknowledging the artist’s movement despite blindness, unabashedly vocalizing the urgency for all encompassing access and recognition. (Brit Barton)
Through August 27 at Roots & Culture, 1034 North Milwaukee
