Curated by Lilly Wei.

Aljira is pleased to present the work of its latest roundup of eighteen emerging artists who participated in its professional development program, Aljira Emerge. Established six years ago with the purpose of preparing visual artists working in diverse media for the realities of the art world, Aljira Emerge includes a series of seminars led by art professionals—from gallerists, art critics and curators to accountants and publicists. The ultimate goal of Emerge, however, is more utopian, based on an unwavering belief that art can make a difference—a goal that is only possible if the art is seen. Towards that end and as the culmination of the program, Aljira also mounts an exhibition of the participants’ work.

The artists that comprise the exhibition Aljira Emerge 6: On Locations are a diverse and culturally eclectic group. Ms. Wei, program curator, and Judith Page, former Emerge program director, selected eighteen artists—11 men and 7 women—from a large pool of applicants. They represent many different mediums—from painting to multimedia installations—and several generations, although most are young artists at the beginning of their promising careers. Several live and work in New Jersey, while the rest are based in the New York area. Many come from other parts of the world—Japan, Taiwan, Korea and the Dominican Republic, to name only a few countries of origin. Thematic considerations, therefore, were not a priority. Nonetheless, a theme of sorts appears: it seems that all of the artists have in common a sense of place, a vision regarding locations and circumstances that are real or imagined, here or elsewhere, past, present or even future. Although exploring different aesthetic strategies, the way each participant’s vision of place is realized creates a thread of continuity and a distinctive synergy throughout the exhibition.

Artists selected to participate in this exhibition are as follows:

Brandon Ballangée, Don Christensen, Yukari Edamitsu, Dahlia Elsayed, Scherezade Garcia, Ben Goldman, Susan Hamburger, Shih-Chieh Huang, Joonhyun Kim, Hiroshi Kumagai, Sebastian Patané Masuelli, Chee Wang Ng, Tara Parsons, Deborah Reichard, Joseph Gerard Sabatino, Gregg Stanger, Tattfoo Tan, Alicia Wargo.

EN-DUR-ANCE /N./ 1. The act, quality, or power of withstanding hardship or stress. 2. The state or act of persevering; continuing survival.

What is your definition of home? What influenced your decision to leave? What is your fondest memory? What is your most treasured possession? Why and for whom are you standing?

These questions are explored in Aljira’s presentation of Endurance, a gripping collaborative-based project between New York artists Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry and a group of Seattle homeless youth. In life-size color photographs and video this project documents the youth’s participation in a 26-hour performance of endurance which required them to take turns standing still on a public sidewalk while looking directly into the camera for an hour. Dedicating each performance for the memory of a friend who died from life on the streets, the youth engaged in civic disobedience by violating Seattle Civility Laws, which make standing or seating motionless in public a criminal offense. In Endurance McCallum and Tarry redefine the profile of activist art putting an alternative face on American youth culture.

Also on view, in Gallery 2: Young Curators/Newark, a presentation of work by over fifty student-artists in all media that examines their response to contemporary art and its impact on their daily lives. The exhibition’s curatorial team includes student representatives from participating Newark Public High Schools, West Side, Malcolm X Shabazz, and Weequahic, who selected work created by their peers during an intensive 10-week studio arts program.

Young Curators is an educational outreach and youth development initiative developed in partnership with the Newark Public Schools.

Endurance was made in partnership with Peace for the Streets by Kids from the Streets as part of ARTS UP, Office of Arts & Cultural Affairs, City of Seattle. Funding was provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, Seattle City Light Percent for Art, Seattle Department of Neighborhoods and the Fales Foundation. Young Curators/Newark is made possible, in part, by the MCJ Foundation, William T. Grant Foundation, The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and an ARTSTART project grant from the Newark Arts Council.”

Photo (at right): Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry, T-Bone, (August 5th, 2002; 10:01pm-11:00pm), Collection of Kehinde Wiley

Curated by Cynthia Hawkins.

Aljira, a Center for Contemporary Art proudly presents African American Printmakers: The Legacy Continues, an exhibition that highlights the contributions of African American artists to printmaking from the 1920’s to the present. Organized by independent curator, Cynthia Hawkins, African American Printmakers consists of over 90 prints by 26 artists whose artworks chronicle the American experience and innovations in the medium of printmaking. This traveling exhibition is a sequel to An American Legacy: African American Printmakers, also organized by Cynthia Hawkins for Cedar Crest College in Allentown, PA in January 2002. The original exhibition featured four distinguished pioneers of American art, Aaron Douglas, Wilmer Jennings, Dox Thrash, and Hale Woodruff.

The exhibition’s sequel continues its examination of the legacy of African American printmakers with the inclusion of a prominent group of post-World War II and contemporary artists. This chronological survey revisits the work of Douglas, Woodruff, Jennings, and Thrash—artists from the era of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Harlem Renaissance—and highlights subsequent generations of African American printmakers. The artists’ interpretations of the Black Aesthetic, both historical and contemporary, are presented through a range of traditional and innovative printmaking techniques including etchings, woodcuts, linocuts, lithographs, tripoint, carborundum and mixed media and digital prints. “I chose these particular artists on the basis of their significant contributions in two major areas: advancement of their art form and the preservation of the black experience in America,” says Cynthia Hawkins. “This exhibition offers the public an excellent context for the exploration of African American history through art.”

In addition to the 1920’s and 1930’s, artists featured in African American Printmakers: The Legacy Continues include important educators and arts administrators from 1940 through 1960: Robert Blackburn, founder and director of the Printmaking Workshop in New York; Vivian E. Brown who taught at Rutgers University; William Majors who was a teacher at several institutions including New Hampshire University; Norman Lewis; Robert Neal; Frederick Jones; and James L. Wells. The exhibition also includes the work of contemporary artists who continue to push the boundaries of the medium, and like their predecessors, some of them teach in art schools across the country: Eldizer Cortor, Elizabeth Catlett, John Dowell, Albert Huie, Curlee Holton, Howardena Pindell, Berrisford Boothe, Charlotte Ka, Otto Neals, Norma Morgan, Nanette Carter, Linda Hiwot, Robin Holder, Camille Billops, and Kabuya Bowens.

The following artists were selected for inclusion in this exhibition:

Robert Blackburn, Camille Billops, Berrisford Boothe, Kabuya Bowens, Vivian E. Browne, Nanette Carter, Elizabeth Catlett, Eldzier Cortor, Aaron Douglas, John Dowell, Linda Hiwot, Robin Holder, Curlee Holton, Albert Huie, Wilmer Angier Jennings, Frederick D. Jones, Charlotte Ka, Norman Lewis, William Majors, Norma Morgan, Robert Neal, Howardina Pindell, Dox Thrash, James L. Wells, Hale Woodruff.

Photo (at right): Howardena Pindell, Antares, Aug. 2001, Northern Hemisphere (detail), 2002

Curated by Raul Zamudio.

Aljira’s contribution to the statewide Transcultural New Jersey initiative, curated by Raul Zamudio, takes its title from the essay “The Crystal Land” (1966), written by the influential American conceptual artist Robert Smithson (1938–1973). For Smithson, New Jersey was a place where he could realize his large-scale, experimental earthworks that were difficult to execute in urban New York. Yet New Jersey was more than a physical setting for Smithson’s avant-garde projects for he called it “The Crystal Land,” because this term was also a metaphor for the possibility of working outside the circuits of New York’s ensconced art establishment.

Following New York’s decentralization as an artistic center in the 1990s, a re-contextualization of “The Crystal Land” is timely, as evinced by the variety of art currently produced in New Jersey. The Crystal Land revisits New Jersey but from a whole different set of criteria stemming from myriad contexts that distinguish it from its past—first and foremost, is that New Jersey today is a poly-cultural state that reflects the globalizing tendencies of large cities in the United States and abroad. The artists whose work is featured in The Crystal Land Revisited are from diverse cultural backgrounds, mining their disparate global origins and fusing them with the locality of their distinct New Jersey experiences.

Transcultural New Jersey: An Arts and Education Initiative is a yearlong, statewide project documenting the contributions of Latino/Hispanic/Caribbean, African American, Asian American, and Native American artists living and/or working in New Jersey through more than twenty exhibitions at museums, galleries, and other cultural organizations. The program is designed to highlight the achievements of artists from historically under-represented populations and provide insight into the state’s diverse communities, foster cross-cultural dialogue and understanding, and impact curriculum development and education. Transcultural New Jersey was developed by the Rutgers University Office for Intercultural Initiatives and the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum in partnership with New Jersey Network (NJN) Public Television.

The following artists were selected for inclusion in this exhibition:

Carlos Ancalmo, Alessandro Balteo, Jonathan Calm, Karlos Carcamo, James Chang, Dahlia Elsayed, Airan Kang, Emma McCagg, Yucef Merhi, Yasira Nun, Michael Tong, Liselot van der Heijden.

Photo (at right): Jonathan Calm, Trigger, 2003

Curated by Dominique Nahas.

“The artists in the Aljira Emerge 2003 program have created singularly timeless works whose very timeliness has given me pleasure and satisfaction.” – Dominique Nahas, Aljira Emerge 2003 catalog

“The Emerge program relies on the eighteen participating artists to give the program meaning. Each artist must not only support one another, contribute to one another’s well-being and success, but must extend their knowledge to the community at large, to engender a “congress of wonders,” a collection of individuals who envision a world where artists and communities interact positively and productively.”
– Judith Page, Aljira Emerge 2003 catalog

The following artists were selected for inclusion in this exhibition:

Chris Bors, Gene Fellner, Arvin Jason Flores, Charley Friedman, Jeffrey Gibson, Suzanne Goldenberg, Rebecca Hackemann, Ellen Harvey, Jennifer Mazza, Carrie Moyer, Rune Olsen, Jihyun Park, Charlotte Schulz, Fran Shalom, Richard Silberman, Ayumi Tamaki, Deborah Wasserman, Anna-Mária Vág.

Photo (at right): Charley Friedman, Lobster Clock, 2004