Artist's Reception: October 4, 2013, 6:00 - 8:30 PM
Panel with Rizvana and Rujeko Hockley: September 21, 2013, 12:30 - 2:00 PM
"If the sky is above my head, when I turn my head upward, I will see the sky." - Huey P. Newton, 1970
The Hagedorn Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of New York interdisciplinary artist Steffani Jemison’s work. The installation consists of 3 videos, 5 inkjet prints on acetate and several text-based images.
Jemison’s work considers issues that arise when conceptual practices are inflected by black history and vernacular culture. Inspired by Huey P. Newton's speech at Boston College in November 1970, regarding how ideas—and politics – change: that progress is possible only when reason and observation interact, Jemison presents an extended meditation upon the values of anticipation and regret, employing repetition, translation, and return as artistic tools.
Addressing the form and materiality of a photograph through the fugitivity of the image, Jemison creates various iterations of images, stating about her process, “the folds and creases and edges generate in each form a topography that is infinitely variable,” even as the works are essentially similar.
Jemison’s process-based contingent objects change appearance and meaning through such regenerated productions, their juxtaposition with each other, and their resonance with the site. Her photographs, combined with her text-based work (an identical list of affirmations duplicated, with surface variation, throughout the exhibition) and her videos (inspired by early 20th c chase films, but which are documents of the urban free-running sport of Parkour), challenge perception, and aesthetic and cultural convention.
Steffani Jemison (born 1981, Berkeley, CA) lives and works in New York City. This year she is exhibiting in New York at Laurel Gitlen, the Studio Museum of Harlem, the Bronx Museum and Team Gallery; Sydhavn Station, Copenhagen, Denmark; Gallery 400, Chicago, IL; Juxtaposition Arts and Bindery Projects, Minneapolis, MN; and LA >< ART, Los Angeles, CA.
For additional information visit the Hagedorn Foundation Gallery website.