'Common Ground: Artists Reimagining Community' (Virtual Exhibit)

The art world is small and interconnected, but it is sometimes difficult to see the connections. Inspired by mutual aid societies that assist community members in need and employing this as a curatorial strategy, curator Jennifer Vanderpool invited 10 artists to exhibit who, in turn, each invited an artist who then each asked an artist to participate, and the project continues to grow like a web, as invited artists are inevitably connected to other exhibiting artists.

The work included in "Common Ground" engages, investigates and questions the concepts of what “community” is and how we, as a communal society engaged in civil contestation, can reimagine what it can be by addressing the sociopolitical and economic ruptures laid bare by COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement. Who is empowered to be heard and participate in crafting what makes a happy, healthy, equitable and socioeconomically thriving community? Art, as a mode of storytelling, can facilitate these conversations.

"Common Ground: Artists Reimagining Community" integrates the participatory strategies of social practice art to organize communities in debate and collaboration with modes of curatorial activism approaches that challenge the assumptions and erasures of voices in hegemonic narratives. This exhibit is the cure to your ennui, the medicine for that pressure on your bones that became more tangible as COVID-19 progressed. Fill the void with experimental film, music, comics, paintings, photography, graphic novels and so much more.

View all events related to this exhibition, with more to come in Spring 2021 at https://rollandgallery.callutheran.edu/events/tags/Common_Ground/.

Image: April Bey, Colonial Swag in Space (Ferengi Feminism), #20 of 20, CMYK Screen print with screen printed glitter, 30 x 22 inches, 2020. Courtesy of the artist.

The Virtual exhibit can be found at https://rollandgallery.wixsite.com/commongroundexhibit.