“Dirt Yuta Suelo Udongo Te” : Onajide Shabaka’s Art Exhibit About the Most Primordial of Materials

Press from the exhibition:

“Dirt Yuta Suelo Udongo Tè” : Onajide Shabaka’s Art Exhibit About the Most Primordial of Materials:

“Dirt. God created man from it. We grow our food in it. And it’s where all of us go to rest in the end.

For Broward artist, curator, and writer Onajide Shabaka, the primordial substance is also the inspiration for ‘DIRT Yuta Suelo Udongo Tè,’ a new exhibit opening in Miami’s …”

(Via Broward-Palm Beach New Times | Complete Issue.)

Dirt Art Exhibit at Second Saturday June 8:

“Dirt. God created man from it. We grow our food in it. And it’s where most of us go to rest in the end.

For South Florida artist, curator, and writer Onajide Shabaka, the primordial substance is also the inspiration for ‘DIRT Yuta Suelo Udongo Tè,’ a new exhibit opening in t…”

(Via Miami New Times | Complete Issue.)

DIRT Yuta Suelo Udongo Tè: Art is About:

Exhibition runs: June 1-28, 2013

Exhibition Venue:

Spear Building

3815 NE Miami Court

Miami Design District 33137

Weekdays: Tue, Fri, & Sat 12 noon-6 pm

Miamiartexchange.com & Artlab33.com

(also by appt. editor@miamiartexchange.com)”

(Via Art is About.)

DIRT Yuta Suelo Udongo Tè

DIRT Yuta Suelo Udongo Tè
curated by Onajide Shabaka

[curator’s soundings…] [Exhibition images] [Exhibition Catalogue] [New Times & Video coverage]

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Exhibition Venue:
Spear Building
3815 NE Miami Court
Miami Design District 33137

Weekdays: Tue, Fri, & Sat 12 noon-6 pm
(also by appt. editor@miamiartexchange.com)

press release

The participating artists:
Dona Altemus – mixed media
Edouard Duval Carrié – painting
Robert Chambers – mixed media
william cordova – mixed media
Veronica Scharf Garcia – ceramic sculpture, photography
Mark Hahn – photography
Alette Simmons Jimenez – mixed media
Lori Nozick – sculpture
Kim Nicolini – photography, drawing
David Rohn – photography, performance
Onajide Shabaka – mixed media, drawing
Jovan Karlo Villalba – painting, sculpture
Debra Wilk – poetry

Dona Altemus work portrays the constant process of deciphering, while simultaneously sublimating the intellectually intangible action of thinking into form. Jovan Karlo Villalba’s, “The Wake,” comments on the negative effects present-day civilization land as well as the personification of today’s man – worn and fallen. Veronica Scharf Garcia’s Raku Salver, a tray used by a servant to present a letter or card but instead carries a mound of dirt that seems to refer to geophagy. Geophagy is a traditional cultural activity which takes place during pregnancy, religious ceremonies, or as a remedy for disease. Kim Nicolini’s Dirt Yards At Night photographs focus on houses in the very unique landscape of Tucson, Arizona – a town where most of the yards are comprised of dirt and in which there are no streetlights. Nicolini been intrigued by the way these houses look at night, the way small signs of domestic life glow faintly in a sea of darkness and dirt. The photographs are like frames from a film of the domestic unconscious. Also of Arizona, Mark Hahn’s photographs reside between the known, the unknowable, the familiar and the new while focusing on unremarkable objects and the empty spaces between them revealing a fragile compositional and emotional balance. Onajide Shabaka’s art practice makes references to the anthropological, geological, and biological through a visual aesthetic that is challenging and visceral, with a grounding in African Atlantic culture. Alette Simmons Jimenez’s art addresses the significance of human existence with undertones of absurdity that play along as humanity attempts to balance negotiations with nature. Lori Nozick creates environmental installations with architectural and organic structures that refer to social and geological changes, both physically and symbolically, that also function as repositories of individual and collective moments and memory. Edouard Duval Carrié’s art reflects the culture and history of Haiti with references to the Vodou religion. His work is often overtly political, executed in attempts to embody his nation’s spirit and its troubles with an attitude that is neither detached nor ironic. Robert Chambers finds himself constantly toying with visual connections between science and art, forcing them into a realm of senselessness and chaos. This work stimulates viewers into constructing their own understanding of contemporary concerns and questions which may be used as an impetus to encourage associations between disparate entities. william cordova says he has an urgent desire to create alternate perspectives. “Conscious change only occurs when we change our perspective,” he says. As a life long gardener, Debra Wilk finds nothing about dirt derogatory. She wonders how dirt become a lowly condition, and her prose poem DIRT, takes that path. Dirt changes metaphor, from a blessing of sustenance to a lowly human condition. She sees the many layers of perspective about dirt, as metaphor and experience.

“THE BLOOMING”

for Stephen Wright

A giving light
Lends
To the earth
Leaves a winter’s thaw
And weaves
A summer’s sweat
Tends
With touch persistent
Returns
With Colour
The honesty of dirt

“DIRT”
What do you do with a bad mother? A mother so old there’s no way things will turn out different. She dies and it’s official. A mother who knew what she was talking about when she told us we were never wanted. No, that’s not exactly true—what she said was she never wanted children. Not as personal. Hang on to ambiguous details. You love her. She wasn’t evil. Evil doesn’t teach her young not to hate—doesn’t forbid words like nigger and spic. She didn’t beat but she didn’t hug. Her eyes never lit up when her child entered the room. She colored eggs for Easter. Filled baskets full of sweets. Poured Tide in her little girls tub when they played in the mud—soft places numb with pain too at home to invoke an honest scream. Little girls become women; retell their secret stories just between them—they drink.  The stories are funny and the bar is noisy. Alone in bed they cry and hate her—wake up filled with guilt and self loathing. One sister stops bathing and the other scrubs every inch—starves herself thin. One sister eats and eats. Sometimes they reverse. Each child holds one secret they never tell. One shovel digs. The other buries.

Debra Wilk

reception images

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Historical Information on the specific origin of dirt: Ely (pron.: /ˈiːli/ ee-lee) is a city in Saint Louis County, Minnesota, United States. It was once named “Que Quam Chep”, which means “land of the berries” in the Chippewa language. The population was 3,460 at the 2010 census.[6] It is located in the Vermilion Iron Range, and was historically home to several Iron ore mines.

Chippewa, or the Ojibwe, were the first to inhabit the Ely area. They are believed to have sought refuge with the abundance of blueberries. Trappers and voyageurs made their way to the area in the 18th century in search of new land and furs. Later, in the mid-19th century, while explorers and prospectors were entering the area, the gold rush began. Although no gold was found in the Ely area, large deposits of iron ore were. Iron ore was first discovered in Ely in 1883, near the west end of the flooded, abandoned mine that is now called Miner’s Lake. As the mining of the iron ore began, the population of Ely began to boom.

After the addition of the railroad in 1888, the mines began shipping the iron ore to the docks of Lake Superior in Two Harbors. Originally, the mining was an open pit operation since there was an abundance of iron ore on the surface. Later, deep shafts were made to start mining underground. With the addition of underground mining, support beams made of logs were put in to prevent tunnel collapsing. This in turn started the logging and milling industry for Ely.

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Dirt and Pollution

In the process of research for my curatorial project, I found some interesting texts on the subject by Mary Douglas. Her book, “Purity and Danger,” has proved even more quotable than expected. At any rate, here’s an excerpt written up by London: Ark Paperbacks. The concept of the exhibition, DIRT, was open to many approaches.

The book “Purity and Danger” written by Mary Douglas was first published in 1966. Mary Douglas was a British anthropologist recognized for her studies on socialanthropology with focus on religion and symbolism. She developed fieldwork in a highly pollution-conscious culture of the Congo and started to look for a systemic approach. In Purity and Danger she analysed the ideas of pollution and taboo, considering different cultures from a structural point of view and with some influence from Gestalt psychology. Her purpose was to avoid a limited explanation, regarding the phenomena in relation to the whole social structure.

The argument is built up in ten chapters: Ritual Uncleanness, Secular Defilement, The Abominations of Leviticus, Magic and Miracle, Primitive Worlds, Powers and Dangers, External Boundaries, Internal Lines, The System at War With Itself, The System Shattered and Renewed. In general terms abominations, restriction and punishment represent the power of social boundaries; however dangerous things can have at the same time creative power. The discussion about the real differences between primitive and modern cultures as well as the wide presence of body symbolism improves the quality of the argument.

“Purity and Danger” presents a deep study of pollution concepts and a wide approach of how social rules are reinforced. In order to study pollution for instance it is necessary consider religion not only as a belief in spiritual beings but a complex system of values. In this case a systemic analysis disclose much more than a narrow view centered in differences between primitive and modern. This study also pays attention to methodological problems in anthropological research about primitive cultures. It is very difficult to access all the elements in different cultures therefore it is easy to adopt a biased posture. However, the author is very perspicacious in considers many possible traps about the use of some words and the danger in making fast conclusions.

Mary Douglas claims that the understanding of purity rules can open place to discuss profound themes and her book makes it possible. A pollution study touches question not only about primitive cultures but it reveals also mysteries that are present in all societies. The strong presence of symbols and rites in all the spheres of any culture and how they are elaborated discloses interesting questions about the expressive capacity of human being.

Grounding Myself in Dirt Yards

Grounding Myself in Dirt Yards:

“So tonight I attempted to ground myself, ahem, by photogaphing a couple more dirt yards at night. Sometimes I just need to do ordinary things like that. Wait a minute. Maybe photographing dirt yards at night isn’t ordinary . . .

For the record, probably best NOT to photograph dirt yards the night before garbage day. Then I find myself standing in someone’s yard with my camera aimed at his house while he’s wheeling his garbage can out to the curb and I’m waiting for my 60 second exposure to finish. I’m like, ‘Uh, hi. Just photographing dirt yards at night! Have a good one!’

Prior to photographing dirt yards, I attempted to go running to clear my bacteria, fever and antibiotic infested brain. I only made it about two miles. But hey, I felt better afterwards!

LOVE my Dirt Yards project. It makes me happy.

Off to bed.”

(Via So What? Kim Dot Dammit Live..)

Dirt Yards

Dirt Yards:


House With Dirt Yard
Tucson, AZ

“I’ve been running the same desert streets up here where I live for twelve years. I love running at night and getting lost, winding my way through the roads until I don’t even know where I am. Sometimes, the only way I can find my way home is by following the mountain.

In the part of town where I run, most of the houses sit on 2 acre lots. As in most places in Tucson, the yards are hard packed dirt. There is no grass. No pretense of taming or changing the land. Just dirt. Sometimes the dirt is lined with rocks. Sometimes a cactus or desert tree grows out of the dirt. But the dominating feature of these yards is dirt and only dirt.

I’ve always been intrigued by the way these houses look at night, the way small signs of domestic life glow faintly in a sea of darkness and dirt. The flicker of a television, the sulfur yellow of a single lamp, or a tiny rectangle of light from a bathroom window are the only things that indicate people actually live behind these walls. The domestic space seems so isolated, fragile and removed from the landscape that encroaches on it. The night pushes right up to the doors and windows. The little smears and the people they represent seem so small compared to the immensity of the desert and the night sky.

The houses seem to me like snapshots from a film. A million stories run through my head as I run past them in the night. Sometimes the blurred light behind windows seems to sigh when I pass. Other times, the windows are as dark as the dirt yards as if all life has been extinguished.

There are no streetlights in Tucson, so when the dark sets in, it is very dark. The dirt yards merge with the night, blend right into the surrounding desert and dissolve into nothingness. The houses are isolated fortresses in this unforgiving landscape. Dirt pushes right against their walls.

People keep their dirt tidy. They rake their dirt, sweep their dirt, take leaf blowers to it. They spend their weekend afternoons tending to their dirt.

Tucson sits on a giant colony of termites that migrate from deep under the dirt and into the walls of houses. Somewhere under the hard surface of the desert, a giant Queen Termite sends her minions into houses to bring the walls down.

The little islands of domestic space we carve out of this landscape seem so ill-placed. I’ve observed these houses with their dirt yards for years, thinking that somehow they represent the tenuous hold all of us have on the planet. In the end, the TVs and the table lamps might still be standing, but we will all go back to dirt one way or another.

When I learned about a call for artists on the subject of Dirt from my friend Jide, my years of running through the desert at night and contemplating dirt yards all came together for me. So I’m going to put together a set of photos on dirt yards at night and try to figure out exactly what it is I have to say about them.

I’m only going to shoot houses from the streets where I run on. These are the places that I have woven into my personal geography and the way I occupy the Tucson landscape. These roads are like arteries in my life. Running through them gives me a physical hold on the planet. Looking through windows and watching these houses at night as I run through the streets has played a huge role in how I have come to relate to my own existence.

This is where I live now. I live in a place where yards are made of dirt. A place where I run at night and the dirt yards, the landscape of the desert and the night sky all bleed together into a blanket stillness. It makes my heart feel both completely alive and completely at rest, even when my feet are flying as fast as they can go.

I’m really inspired about this project. It feels really personal, really significant and makes me very happy. That’s a good thing”

(Via So What? Kim Dot Dammit Live..)

Call-to-Artists: Dirt

Seeking submissions for a curated exhibition: of dirt, about dirt, with dirt, in a variety of media. (see below image) Submit here. (or use: printcollection (at) gmail (dot) (com).)

(Submission Deadline Extended to: 10 February, 2013)

Required for submission: Email artist statement or artist résumé, no more than five (5) image samples (unzipped, max. dimensions of 800 x 800 pixels, 72 dpi.), and additional support materials. All submissions will be reviewed a.s.a.p.

“Dirt is not dirt, but only matter in the wrong place.” Variations of this quote have been attributed to William James, Sigmund Freud, Mary Douglas, John Ruskin and a host of others, but an 1883 issue of Longman’s Magazine confirms its author was Lord Palmerston. He aired his starched Sunday shirt on a gooseberry bush only to have it flitter into the mud, but he donned it anyway, uttering this now famous line.

It’s hard to define “dirt,” since it represents the dissolution of everything else, the final stop, the end of entropy, the common conclusion of the thousand natural shocks that the flesh is heir to. Our relationship to dirt is entirely mixed: we grow our plants in it, but hoard soaps to dissolve it in the home. We scrub it from our bodies but purchase burial plots to enclose us after we pass. We stand on the porch marveling at the beautiful rich topsoil and spend the next hour vacuuming and mopping the floor to make sure that same stuff isn’t here, just there.

Dirt became contemporary art with the Earthworks of the late 1960s, a kind of formalism that moved out of the gallery, into the ground and then out of town. It wasn’t for ecological concerns as is typical today, instead it tended to be conceptual and psychological. Now, however, land art has made a return for environmental reasons, and in the mix as well is the use of dirt and nature — nature is dirt, after all — as a timeless balm against the fragmentation of media culture. The dirt salve is the subject of at least four new books.

We will look broadly, then narrow our selections to what we consider meaningful. Thank you for your submission in advance!

Submit here.

All submissions we please request a $10.00 submission fee. Fees used towards exhibition promotion.




Thank you.