In the PROJECT SPACE

AlieNation

October 11th - January 11th
Reception for the Artists Friday October 11th 6p - 8p

*ADA accessible*

Alien

unfamiliar and disturbing or distasteful.
external to a thing, its essential nature, or its original character.
Latin: alienus ‘belonging to another’, from alius ‘other’. (Dictionary.com)

 Nation

a territorial division containing a body of people of one or more nationalities and usually characterized by relatively large size and independent status. (Dictionary.com)

Alienation

a condition of workers in a capitalist economy, resulting from a lack of identity with the products of their labor and a sense of being controlled or exploited. (Marx, 1844)

“Even as politicians and the media have increasingly shifted away from the phrase “illegal immigrant” and toward “undocumented immigrant,” Trump over the past several months has taken a hard turn in the other direction. With increasing regularity, he is employing the phrase “illegal alien”(The Washington Post, January 2019)

In the colonial imagination there is a singular grand narrative, with a pale, blindfolded character at the center. This character benefits from forming alliances with those who have the most economic power while alienating all others. While some colonial norms are starting to unravel we have yet to tend to this particular knot of economics and othering at the center.

Each artist in this exhibition disrupts the grand narrative, and offers their alien, or othered, point of view. By experiencing these works together in one place we can perhaps start to see that we are all aliens at one time or another, marked as outsider as our relationship to home, history, and our bodies change over time.

*ADA accessible*