Opening Night @ Villa di Donato
Villa di Donato, Napoli
May 29 – June 10, 2019
Entering the 18th. century Villa di Donato, with candle light leading the way created a magical opening night into the Naples exhibit. Inside, the art exhibition came alive with a nod to both history and our contemporary moment. Perfectly juxtaposed for thematic exhibition, Edge of History.
Curated by Cynthia Penna, 9 artist from both Italy and Los Angeles developed artworks that reflected upon our own cultural histories and how it informs our vision of the future.
This exhibition allowed me to introduce my newest series ‘Ether of the Homeland’. This work is a look through the lens into the American Dream and how the nostalgia for our history contains its own seductive ethers, as sweetly euphoric hyperbole.
About the Artworks:
A immigrant’s dream of plenty
Not a Land of Plenty nor a Time of Plenty, but it’s a collective human value that runs from the veins of our heritage through our sense of community and belonging. The artworks start as a reflection upon what are the motivations of my families immigration 4 generations ago. Lost are much of the stories, dreams and aspirations leaving us with names and dates that reveal very little.
To fit theses puzzle pieces together, the artworks interweave the pastoral cultural propaganda from our homelands postage stamps dated to the last century. Etching of harvest, family, strength, justice and freedom become reflections into a pool of lost memories of the ideal of plenty.
Echoing the loss of memories the arrangement of these images fragments outward into unrecognizable slivers, like images alight in the virtue of an American Dream.