Security in a State of Violence
Eli Liebman and other artists
ARC.19
July 28 - August 11, 2019
Security in a State of Violence is a multi-disciplinary collective art installation interrogating the notion of self care and how it is immersed in social, political, and economic relations. Specifically, the exhibition investigates the boundary between the self and the other, with an understanding of how the self and other are intimately and dialectically linked. The framework of alterity is flexible and expandable, encompassing other phenomena (contradictions) such as security and violence, connectivity and alienation, the domestic and the foreign, and the natural and the artificial. Taken as a whole, the installation will encourage viewers to understand the process of enclosure, not as a distant phenomenon, nor as the inevitable outcome of history, but one that was and is contentious, intimate, and volatile. Something that occurs overtly, insidiously, continuously, perpetually, and on multiple scales (the individual, the community, the nation, the globe), ultimately leading to foreclosed possibilities and imaginations.
While the intellectual motivation of this exhibit arises from current political debates and critical and political theory, its aesthetic motivations are popular and quotidian. Eli Liebman's woodblocks take inspiration from the art of social movements throughout history such as Käthe Kollwitz’s work documenting the horrors of WWI, the Taller de Gráfica Popular’s involvement with the Mexican Revolution, and Zhao Yannian’s persecutions during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The other artists also work with an understanding of craft and tradition, imbedding their creations in social contexts and aesthetics. Central to the engagement with the above-mentioned topics is the question of how do these processes actually take place? How do they register on the human body? On the landscape? As transformations take place over larger geographic scales and shorter timespans, locating them in the physical world, via art making is one way to increase their legibility and the public’s engagement with them.
The mixed media exhibition focuses on the phenomena and relationship of security and violence and the ways each is articulated in various forms ranging from human touch to dragnet surveillance and from the built environment to notions of health. The show will be comprised of woodblock prints, animation, sewn blankets, postcards, sound, and sculpture. Artists include: Eli Liebman (MA), Venancio Velasco (Oaxaca, Mexico), Clarice Allgood (MN), Andrew Fernandez (NC), Alex Liebman (WA).
Public events include a reading on Saturday, August 3.
While the intellectual motivation of this exhibit arises from current political debates and critical and political theory, its aesthetic motivations are popular and quotidian. Eli Liebman's woodblocks take inspiration from the art of social movements throughout history such as Käthe Kollwitz’s work documenting the horrors of WWI, the Taller de Gráfica Popular’s involvement with the Mexican Revolution, and Zhao Yannian’s persecutions during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. The other artists also work with an understanding of craft and tradition, imbedding their creations in social contexts and aesthetics. Central to the engagement with the above-mentioned topics is the question of how do these processes actually take place? How do they register on the human body? On the landscape? As transformations take place over larger geographic scales and shorter timespans, locating them in the physical world, via art making is one way to increase their legibility and the public’s engagement with them.
The mixed media exhibition focuses on the phenomena and relationship of security and violence and the ways each is articulated in various forms ranging from human touch to dragnet surveillance and from the built environment to notions of health. The show will be comprised of woodblock prints, animation, sewn blankets, postcards, sound, and sculpture. Artists include: Eli Liebman (MA), Venancio Velasco (Oaxaca, Mexico), Clarice Allgood (MN), Andrew Fernandez (NC), Alex Liebman (WA).
Public events include a reading on Saturday, August 3.
Eli Liebman is a printmaker, educator, and potter based in western Massachusetts. He has previously showed prints at a number of local venues and most recently as part of the “Rewriting the Master Narrative” juried print show at the Arts+Literature Laboratory in Madison, WI and the “Power of Print” juried print exhibition at the Power and Light Press as part of the Southwest Print Fiesta in Silver City, NM, both in 2018. He works as a math and college preparatory tutor at the Care Center, which principally serves young mothers (14-24) in the achievement of high school equivalency and a college associate’s degree. He also initiated and teaches three on-going art courses at the Greenfield county jail, exploring how art can be used as a tool for rehabilitation, reflection, and connection to historical and contemporary events occurring on the outside. He recently finished a three-year apprenticeship at Stonepool Pottery, where he learned the craft of making wood-fired, salt glazed pottery. He also has a background in applied mathematics and ecology, and while at Macalester College used modeling to understand multiple biological processes ranging from bird song identification, bee population stability, and forest carbon dynamics.