Monday January 28, 7:30pm
YES: Rachelle Mozman Solano / Ezra Wube
Artists in person

Still from “Loneliness Lonely” by Rachelle Mozman Solano (2015) – Image courtesy of the artist

We are very pleased to kick off our 2019 emerging artist series YES with a screening of video works by artists Rachelle Mozman Solano and by Ezra Wube, two artists currently based in Brooklyn and working with multiple artistic mediums.

The program includes the three most recent video projects “Opaque Mirror” (2017), “The Dying Cavendish” (2017), and “Loneliness Lonely” (2015) by Mozman Solano and a selection of several short videos by Wube, from his 2008 “When we all met” to his latest “Pattern Synthesis” (2018).

Although employing different techniques — Mozman Solano works with sets and actors while Wube with stop-motion animation — both artists combine realistic with fantastic storytelling in their works, with narratives stemming from current events and historical occurrences. Among the range of subject matter addressed are life experiences as an immigrant, shifts in status quo, and Western colonialism with its environmental and socio-economical ramifications, especially in relationship to the origins of the commercial production of crops: in Mozman Solano’s “The Dying Cavendish” (2017) the focus is the banana trade; in Wube’s “Kaled” (2014) it is coffee.

The artists approach their moving image works with painterly sensibilities. Wube’s animations are often based on a single canvas that he repaints over and rephotographs multiple times. In Mozman Solano’s staged short videos, the scenery, sculptural elements as well as the actors’ makeup and clothing — collaged from multicolored fabrics — are meticulously juxtaposed compositions, which in “Opaque Mirror”, for example, become a revisitation of Gauguin’s work as well.

Mozman Solano and Wube will be in attendance and available for Q&A following the screening.


General admission $8
Members & Students $6

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Rachelle Mozman Solano grew up in New York City of parents who shared the experience of immigration. She works between New York and Panama, the country of her maternal family. Starting often from her biography and family history, Mozman Solano explores how culture shapes individuals and how environment conditions behavior. Her work is deeply informed by her clinical work in psychoanalysis and is positioned at the intersection of mythology, history, economics, and the psyche through the use of photographs and films that confound fact and fictional narrative. Mozman Solano’s work is currently featured in the solo exhibition Metamorphosis of Failure at Smack Mellon, Brooklyn, NY, and was recently included in El espejo opaco de Gauguin in Arteconsult, Panamá, Panamá, LARA (Latin American Roaming Art), Panamá, Panamá, the X Bienal Centroaméricana, Do/Tell at the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania, and Portraiture Now: Staging the Self at Americas Society, among others. Mozman Solano has been awarded residencies at LMCC workspace, Smack Mellon, The Camera Club of New York, and Light Work. Mozman is a Fulbright Fellow, and has exhibited among others at the National Portrait Gallery at Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC; Americas Society, New York; National Hispanic Cultural Center, Albuquerque, New Mexico; The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; Chelsea Museum, New York; DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA; Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA; Shore Institute of Contemporary Art, Long Branch, NJ; Festival de la luz at the Centro Cultural Recoleta, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Instituto Cultural Itau, São Paulo, Brazil; the Friese Museum, Berlin, Germany; Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Santiago, Chile; Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales, Montevideo, Uruguay; Centro Cultural de España, Mexico City, Mexico; Festival Biarritz, Biarritz, France; as well as the IX Bienal de Cuenca, Ecuador. Her work has been published in the Light Work annual Contact Sheet, Presumed Innocence, Exit magazine and numerous other publications.

Ezra Wube (b. 1980, Ethiopia) is a mixed media artist based in Brooklyn, NY. His work references the notion of past and present, the constant changing of place, and the dialogical tensions between “here”and “there”. His exhibitions include Gwangju Biennial, Gwangju South Korea (2018), Museum of the Moving Image, Queens, NY (2017); The 13th Biennial de Lyon, Lyon, France (2015); Dak’Art 2014 Biennale, Dakar, Senegal (2014); The 18th International Festival of Contemporary Art SESC_Videobrasil, São Paulo, Brazil (2013); and At the Same Moment, Time Square Arts Midnight Moment, New York, NY (2013). His residencies and awards include Open Sessions Program, The Drawing Center, New York, NY (2016); Wave Hill, Winter Workspace, Bronx, NY (2016); Rema Hort Mann Foundation; and the Triangle Arts Association Residency, Brooklyn, NY (2015). Ezra received his BFA (2004) from Massachusetts College of Art, Boston, MA and an MFA (2009) from Hunter College, New York, NY.

Still from “Gela” by Ezra Wube (2011) – Image courtesy of the artist

Program:

The Dying Cavendish
by Rachelle Mozman Solano, single-channel video, 2017, 9 minutes 24 seconds

The Dying Cavendish satirically presents the history of the United Fruit Company in Panama and their relationship to media, education and central intelligence in advancing their product, the banana. In the narrative, Minor Keith, railroad builder and founder of United Fruit Company, is reincarnated into a Cavendish banana, dying from Panama disease. He meets Flor, a woman he once knew, in a banana town caught between past and present. United Fruit, the first modern multinational company created a blueprint for the modern corporation merging big business interests with government policy. The history of United Fruit laid the foundation for current US policy in Central America, that continues to be echoed today. – RMS

Loneliness Lonely
by Rachelle Mozman Solano, single-channel video, 2015, 13 minutes

In Loneliness Lonely, scenes from films, Heathers, The Pawnbroker, Rebel Without a Cause, and West Side Story, are collaged to speak with humor and reflection to contemporary American culture, the immigrant experience, and language. The story of four teenage girls living in an American town unfolds. The four girls are bonded together by a unique experience and have developed an unusual friendship. Their experiences and those of their immigrant parents surface and are contrasted in an environment of gun carrying high school teachers, tea party rallies, and first love. Loneliness Lonely speaks to the changing identity of the American cultural fabric, the internal shift for the immigrants who are a part of this fabric and their children who live in a liminal space. – RMS

Opaque Mirror
by Rachelle Mozman Solano, single-channel video, 2017, 14 minutes 18 seconds

Opaque Mirror is based on fantasies of the short time Paul Gauguin traveled to Panama. The story satirically examines the artists search for subjects, “primitive” life and racial purity as described in letters to his wife and his book Noa Noa, within a diverse Caribbean topography. Opaque Mirror, is a playful imagining of what might have been the stories of the women who were his muses. – RMS

When we all met
by Ezra Wube, single-channel video, 2008, 3 minutes 54 seconds

“When we all met” is based on my experience where all members of my family were reunited after years of separation. I use graphite pencil, acrylic paint and photo collage on Mylar. Mylar’s plastic surface allows graphite pencil marks to float over the ground, which facilitates erasure and allows subsequent scene to develop. To make this animation I photographed a drawing then erased it and drew over the same surface for the next frame. In this animation scenes are constructed, then deconstructed, collaged, then de-collaged. This process allowed me to keep the past while moving forward. – EW

Indamora
by Ezra Wube, single-channel video, 2009, 2 minutes 40 seconds

This animation is performed and documented directly from life to embrace the present. In this animation, I am using the window view from my studio, where an active scene of construction workers creates the backdrop. By putting acetate on the glass of the window I am able to keep full transparency. I am using a brush dipped in temporary Sumi ink to construct each scene. Each painting is photographed with a digital camera, and then washed away by water poured on the slippery acetate. In this process the confinement to a singular authenticity is forever gone even though it has been documented. The documentation serves as an indexical vehicle which captures the past. The purpose of documentation is not to preserve, but to serve as a bridge, connecting the past with the present, the internal with the external. – EW

Bridge St
by Ezra Wube, single-channel video, 2015, 2 minutes 33 seconds

In this short animation, each constructed scene is based on suggestions from passersby. I approached individuals that I had never met before and ask them to direct me toward their favorite place in the neighborhood. After going their and sketching the environment I then asked another passerby to lead me to their favorite place and so on. I painted the scenes, from the sketches and from memory, onto two separate canvases. Each frame of the animation is layered upon the previous one. In this project I’m interested in exploring the idea of authorship as well as experiencing the aesthetic and personal perspectives of others. – EW

Kaled
by Ezra Wube, single-channel video, 2014, 6 minutes 41 seconds

Kaled in inspired by an Ethiopian legend about the discovery of coffee. As the legend narrates, in a region called Kefa (which is still the name of the region today) a herder named Kaled observes his goats getting excited after eating a red fruit. He is curious and takes the coffee beans to his village. After several experiments the villagers find a way to use them. In this animation I’m retelling the legend within a modern day setting. – EW

Mela
by Ezra Wube, single-channel video, 2011, 1 minute 41 seconds

In this piece I am exploring the idea of belonging by tracing the outline of the shifting skyline. Through imagination, learning, and a continuos adjustment, I strive to relate the communal with the personal identity. – EW

Gela 2
by Ezra Wube, single-channel video, 2011, 2 minutes

In this piece I am exploring the idea of Pluralism through autobiography. As a person who moved between geographies (Ethiopia, U.S.A.) time and place are no longer singular for me. I am in a continuous dialogue negotiating “Here” and “There”. These fragmentations are reconciled through the storytelling aspects of my work, as means to connects multiple realities. For me, an imaginative relationship is necessary to adapt to a new environment, to embrace the here and now, and to connect with the ephemeral in the everyday. While collaging my past with present experiences, I attempt to make a third entity that is in both the past and the present in which places and time are continuously shifting. – EW

Menged Merkato
by Ezra Wube, single-channel video, 2016, 3 minutes 49 seconds

Based on Emanuel Admassu’s Essay “Menged Merkato”, an architectural analysis and historical journey of the largest open-air market in Africa, located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Merkato was developed during the Italian occupation of Addis Ababa to segregate the markets of the locals and the newcomers. Unlike the earlier circular formation which centered the royal palace, Merkato was built on a grid which allowed for a dispersed flow facilitating dynamic interactions and exchanges. This video reflects this new identity’s continuos resistance to change but also its resistance to stillness in the course of major political shifts. – EW

At the same moment
by Ezra Wube, single-channel video, 2013, 2 minutes 57 seconds

This animation is based on memories of my daily commutes in an effort to observe the ephemeral in the everyday. – EW

Pattern Synthesis
by Ezra Wube, single-channel video, 2018, 4 minutes 40 seconds

Patterns are all around us and inside of us. They can be visible, as in the windows of a building or stripes on a Zebra, or hidden as in the fractal nature of trees and rocks. They can be personal, how one functions in the everyday or societal such as the trends of an era or generation. I believe patterns can be timely and comforting due to their sameness, however Philip Ball in his book “Patterns in Nature” theorized that pattern is created from the disruption of regularity. In this animation short, collective and continuously reforming patterns are created. Created at Children’s Museum of Manhattan Artist Residency Program, and made in collaboration with the museum’s visitors exploring patterns. – EW

Twilight Galaxies
by Ezra Wube, single-channel video, 2017, 7 minutes 51 seconds

This animation short was inspired by immigrant holiday ceremonies. For the background I painted images of real and imagined galaxies. In the foreground I animated common objects that are found from these gatherings. These objects echo the transitory state of these ceremonies, becoming the new icon that defy a specific cultural association. As banal as they appear or void of originality, these objects can be a transmitter for a possible utopia through interaction, exchange and un-stillness. For sound I used galactic waves translated to sound waves and audio samples from the ceremonies. – EW

TRT: 75 minutes approx.