VAP 2023-Q3
Curiouser & Curiouser presents Ferality in Nameless Realms, an offsite ICS exhibition co-curated by Jenn Cacciola and SK Reed, featuring twenty-two artists from the larger New York and Kansas City regions. Through virtual studio visits and collaborations, the artists shared conversations about the art communities in their respective cities. Inspired by Sara Swain’s essay ‘Feral Hospitality,’ the show explores a different type of hospitality rooted in communal care and connection activated outside the physical “home”, and in contrast to the challenges of a late-capitalist environment. The exhibition highlights the necessity of digital and long-distance connection for navigating present instability, and draws from the history of artist-led movements focused on community, transcending notions of space ownership and belonging.
The artists have contributed solo works found in our virtual exhibition and collaborative works found here and at Curiouser and Curiouser Gallery in Kansas City from July 21 to August 18th, 2023.
Enter the exhibition here:
Ferality in Nameless Realms co-curated by Jenn Cacciola and SK Reed featuring twenty-two artists working across disciplines, half from the larger New York area and half from the Kansas City region. Cacciola, based in New York, and Reed based in Kansas, paired artists from their respective locations to share virtual studio visits and create small collaborative works with one another. These collaborations will be shared alongside solo work by each artist, giving the viewer a glimpse of the individual inclinations at play in the generative long-distance work.
The impetus of the project acknowledges that artists and curators are navigating a late-capitalist environment, where resources are constantly shifting and little can be predicted. In response, there is a need to follow our natural tendencies towards care and community-building, which often work against most profit-driven systems. The show’s title draws inspiration from Sara Swain’s essay, Feral Hospitality:
‘Feral Hospitality’ may initially seem like an oxymoron. Hospitality, after all, is associated with home, welcoming, and belonging. Feral, by contrast, conjures all that is unhomely, unwelcomed, and does not belong. From the Latin ‘fera’, meaning wild, it designates the ‘nature’ that we left behind in order to become human (92).
Feral-ness often connotes a negatively framed separation of humans from nature, whereas Swain suggests that in becoming “human,” or in trying to make a life for ourselves within a capitalist and colonial system, we have left behind parts of our natural selves that are rooted in communal care and desire for connection. This as a different type of hospitality that is activated outside the physical home, through meeting others in a co-inhabited space where certain dynamics of ownership can be absolved. Swain encourages, “We must design strategies to live together, making and remaking hospitable places, as they continue to be unmade.”
The long-distance work between the artists and curators of this exhibition suggests a complicated realm of togetherness necessary for navigating the instability of the present. The insistence on making community regardless of concepts of space ownership and belonging is reflected throughout the history of countless artist-led movements.
Artists in Ferality in Nameless Realms:
Adina Andrus, Sibley Barlow, Summer Brooks, Tiana Nanayo Kuʻuleialoha Honda, Ruth Jeyaveeran, Elena Kalkova, Hannah Lindo, Tristan Lindo, Garry Noland, Brittany Norgia, Elinore Noyes, Natalie Ortiz, Allison Panzironi, Heidi Schultz, Chico Sierra, Kirsten Taylor, Emily Teall, Miyuki Tsushima, Sarah Valeri, and Robert Zurer in the main gallery, and an installation by Mary Clara Hutchison (KS) and Patricia Miranda (NY) in the Container Gallery.
Additional information about the artists can be found here.
Collaborative works by artists partners and groups can be found here.
About the curators:
Jenn Cacciola is a NY and CT-based artist, curator, and educator originally hailing from Port Chester, NY. She received a Bachelor of Science in Visual Arts from SUNY Purchase School of Art + Design in 2015. She engages in curation and community building among artists as the Co-Founder/Director of Ice Cream Social, and co-curator of Openings Artist Collective and P2P Curatorial. In 2023 she co-organized the 1st-Annual Port Chester Arts Festival, which provided free arts programming at nine art spaces across town, including exhibitions, open studios, workshops in art/dance/theatre, artisan booths, and schools participation. She has been awarded Artist-in-Residence positions at Clementina Foundation, Sheen Center For Thought & Culture, Manassas National Battlefield Park, and in virtual residencies with Socially Distant Art, World of Co, and Cel del Nord. She has exhibited at BRIC Arts, the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Equity Gallery, Atlantic Gallery, National Association of Women Artists Gallery, Howard County Arts Council, Ely Center of Contemporary Art, among other spaces. She has previously taught PreK-12th grade Art in NYC schools, and worked as an Art Educator with the New-York Historical Society, the NARS Foundation, and Wingspan Arts.
SK Reed (they/them) is an artist and curator based in Kansas City, Kansas. Reed received a BSE in Arts Education and BFA in Painting from The University of Central Missouri in 2014 and an MA from Eastern Illinois University in 2020. They have continued their education, taking courses with NYC Crit Club, New York Studio School, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They received an MFA in Painting & Drawing from The University of Kansas in May of 2023.
Reed has curated independently since 2019, one of their first projects being a group exhibition, Shifting Ground, at Vulpes Bastille in Kansas City and AUTOMAT in Philadelphia. Since May of 2022, they have curated shows with Beco Gallery, an artist-run project based in Kansas City. Exhibitions curated with Beco include Before My Eyes, a three-person exhibition at MdW Assembly at Mana Contemporary in Chicago, Return of the River, a solo exhibition by Levi Walker at Kiosk Gallery, and a group exhibition, Disconcerting Present… or was that a dream? at Bunker Center for the Arts. Additionally, they are a co-founder of Peer2Peer (P2P), a curatorial group of five artists located throughout the US and Canada.
About the space
Curiouser KC (now United Colors Gallery) is a contemporary art gallery in Kansas City. The program presents a diversity of voices and mediums, with a focus on thematic group exhibitions and original solo exhibitions by emerging contemporary artists.