KATARZYNA PERLAK, HAPPILY EVER AFTER, 2019, VIDEO STILL. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST
Among the artists: Katarzyna Perlak
Detroit Art Week, an annual self-guided tour and citywide celebration of contemporary art in Detroit, is pleased to announce the independent curators participating in Young Curators, New Ideas V (YCNI V). Organized by Aleiya Lindsey and Amani Olu of Olu & Company, YCNI V.
Participating curators include Isabella Achenbach, Marian Casey, Luna Goldberg, Amanda McDonald Crowley, Rosie Motley, Gina Mudge, Vera Petukhova, Sophie Olympia Riese, Kasia Sobucka, Nadia Tahoun, Darryl DeAngelo Terrell and Yulia Topchiy.
YCNI V shines a light on the cultural, artistic, social and political transformations initiated by the creative and curatorial practices by those identifying as, woman, Black, POC, LGBTQ+ and gender-nonconforming. With a sense of urgency and relevancy, each multifaceted micro-exhibition will transform a 256 square-foot hotel room into an immersive installation, fostering provocative discussions on the most pressing issues of our time.
Identity, the body and the environment are key components in many of the works, all of which explore varying socio-personal themes, including colonialism, consumerism, sexism, gender, gentrification, gun violence, politics and relationships. By examining societal traditions and the impact of the digital world and social media, these exhibitions question and subvert our social norms. They also shed light on how the erasure and reconstruction of the past has shaped our present and is molding our future. Individual experience and one’s unique orientation to cultural and ideological developments have the power to transform perspectives— for better and for worse. Space is also a factor; the exhibition centers viewpoints of how we create, hold on to and enforce our boundaries— both internally and in the physical world. From painting, performance and sculpture to multimedia, experiential/ephemeral and site-specific installations, artists and curators from multicultural backgrounds share their expansive, divergent insights of our current world.
Participating artists include Fafnir Adamites, Jess Bass, Rachelle Dang, Grey Ellis, Harry Gould Harvey IV, David Heo, Leena Joshi, Lauren Kalman, Amy Khoshbin, Kameron Neal, Dana Nechmad, Derrick Woods Morrow, Katarzyna Perlak, Irit Rosenberg, Wilton Tejeda and Sebastián Villamil.
Support for Young Curators, New Ideas V comes from Adam Abdalla, Stephanie Baptist, Heather Bhandari, Melannie Chard, Ficsher Cherry, Elizabeth Dee, Simone DeSousa, Kyle DeWoody, Eric and Holly Gleason, Micaela Martegani, Victor Martin-Malburet, Monique Meloche, Melissa Netecke, Folake Ologunja, Michael Pozner, Megha Ralapati, Rebecca Ross, Carole Server, Franklin Sirmans, Sue Stoffel, Frank Tribble, Elizabeth Tucker, Tiana Webb Evans and Hank Willis Thomas.
Kasia Sobucka
Politics and feelings have been a driving force behind the development of Katarzyna Perlak’s practice. She’s most influenced by her experiences as a woman, queer, Eastern European and an immigrant. The starting point for her work is often autobiographical, which she then expands into intersubjective dialogues, tapping into ideas of desires and shared vulnerabilities, collective memory and history and asks what the tradition is, whom does it belong to and how can it be reclaimed by those that are marginalized within it?
While continuously revisiting hope, affect, helplessness and strategies of coping with situations of crisis – political or personal – Katarzyna’s works have become increasingly engaged with text and semantics. She investigates the epistemological transference from ‘utopian visions’ to ‘utopian feelings’ and consequently the shift from the spatially oriented notions of utopia to those that are time oriented and based in ‘utopian experiences’.
Wish Landscapes will explore experiences of exhaustion and hope and deal with the subjects of migration and belonging through the portrayal and representation of stories and experiences. Wish Landscapes takes its title from Ernst Bloch’s definition of the relationship between contemporary notions of utopia, hope and horizon.