ArtXchange Gallery presents Living Lineage, an exhibition featuring artists whose creative practices center a connection to heritage, legacy and historical research as a way of asserting cultural identity and connecting with their roots. The gallery brings together these eight artists, representing cultures around the globe, to explore each artist’s deliberate intention to preserve ancestral histories and transform them through their own distinct, contemporary lens.
Trenton Quiocho presents a series of dramatic, sculptural ‘fish traps’ rendered in blown glass. The process of researching historical Filipino basketry weaving, as these fish traps would have been created by his ancestors, “affirms his connection to history,” allowing the artist to explore and understand his own identity and culture. Creating a personal conduit to one’s ancestral culture is also embodied in the work of ceramicist Gustavo Martinez, whose anthropomorphic sculptures connect the artist to the energy and land of his first home in Guadalajara, Mexico. “Creating with clay connects me to an ancient practice and ancestral energy,” writes Martinez. “The completed artwork is essentially an embodiment with an intention.”
Jiyoung Chung (based between Korea and Rhode Island) and Tiao Nithakhong Somsanith (based between Laos and France) are each internationally known for their dedicated efforts to preserve specific cultural techniques, as well as bringing them into the world of contemporary art. Chung’s use of the ancient Korean method of Joomchi paper-making results in compelling, textural abstractions. Somsanith, a member of the deposed royalty of Laos, uses the royal art of gold and silver metal embroidery learned in his youth. Rather than embroidering traditional clothing, the Somsanith meticulously stiches on natural leaves to express Buddhist concepts of impermanence.
Several works drawn from ArtXchange Gallery’s deep relationships with lacquer painters in Vietnam, including twin brothers Hai and Thanh Le and Hoang Thanh Vinh Phong, showcase the ways that different painters blend this traditional technique with new materials, such as oil paint and mixed media, to reflect on the connections between past and present in modern daily life.
As a group, the artists in Living Lineage utilize artmaking as a practice of self-exploration, preservation and asserting the contemporary presence of their individual cultures. Fox Spears, a printmaker and enrolled member of the Karuk tribe (of California), begins every new series by looking at historical Native American baskets and contemplating not only their patterns, but the unique stories behind them and their makers. “All the work I make is a deliberate continuance of Karuk culture…” writes Spears. “Its mere existence becomes an act of resistance against colonial assimilation.”
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