Fun

Art fills the soul as well as the eyes in the poetic Memories of Tomorrow’s Sunrise at CSULA’s Ronald H. Silverman Fine Arts Gallery. Curated by Jason Jenn and Vojislav Radovanovic with Mika Cho, the four-gallery exhibition is a deep dive into what makes us human, and what makes each human who they are.

Participating artists include Enrique Castrejon, Serena JV Elston, Anita Getzler, Jason Jenn, Ibuki Kuramochi, Marne Lucas, Trinh Mai, Vojislav Radovanović, Hande Sever,  Marval A Rex, Kayla Tange, Nancy Kay Turner, and Jessica Wimbley.

The works are each, in their own way, about the connective tissue of ancestry and relationships, identity, and history – both genealogical and spiritual. Some honor family, both those of our bloodlines and those chosen long after birth. Others focus on exploring present hopes and past dreams. There are images that witness loss, honor mentors, explore sexuality, refer to tragedies, relate to purpose, and search for true essence of being alive.

Primarily mixed media in terms of medium, these works are as layered visually as they are with meaning. While each artist’s creation can stand on its own, the interaction between the works is important here. There is real effort in not just bringing the art together in visual conversation, but in allowing viewers and artists alike to explore the power of personal understanding.

The show’s title suggests, according to the curators, that “Collectively, we are the ancestors of tomorrow’s sunrise and someday we shall all be but a memory.” As viewers, we pass unseen as ghosts in front of each, very much alive, work. Conversely, we are also participants in future memories of our own, involved in the immersive experience of viewing, and in our own individual inchoate ways, seeking to share and preserve what we’ve seen.

The large-scale work from Enrique Castrejon, “The Realization You are Losing Your Memory with Frequent Confusion and Disorientation” is a part of a larger series about his father’s chronic illnesses and dementia. Having served as a caregiver during his father’s illness, Castrejon’s electrifying image portrays a deconstructed human body in fragmented shapes, parts linked with artists tape and thumbtacks in a spidery vein-like web of concern, chaos, love, and loss. Strips of printed data from Alzehimer’s Los Angeles stripe the body parts like the wrappings on mummies.

Loss is also at the center of Hande Sever’s “2 or 3 Things I know About Her.” Walnut frames, appearing to represent coffins support and envelope a series of photographs. The photos are reenactments of her young mother’s arrest as a political prisoner during Turkey’s 1980 right-wing junta. It’s a powerful statement on identity and purpose, as well as on politics supported by the U.S. as a military business.

Vojislav Radovanovic’s “Years Devoured by Locusts” also examines the implications of imprisonment and generational trauma, as well as referencing climate change and our imprisoningly slow reaction to it. It’s a graceful work using natural elements such as a wasp nest and tree branches to create a scene that echoes both desolation and beauty. Broken mirror fragments spill like drying water under a tree derelict of leaves, analog television sets play a mix of nature images and static, signifying the potential loss of all these living things, but a wasp honeycomb revolves on a small stand with colored lights, a tiny rainbow of hope that life may still find a way.

Trinh Mai’s “Begins with Tea” takes up a front wall in the exhibition, family photos printed on joss paper, and held, along with seeds, herbs, dried noodles, and grain inside Mai’s grandmother’s used tea bags. Poignant and elegiac, the installation represents the stories about family and friends told by her grandmother over afternoon tea. The delicate, almost ephemeral tea bag pouches are as fragile as the remembrances they contain and steeped in love. A soft, barely-there scent of tea envelopes the wall on which the bags are hung with sewing needles that also belonged to the artist’s grandmother.

Also paying tribute to domestic rituals, is the largest of Nancy Kay Turner’s several fine works here, “Burnt Offerings.” Using parchment paper stained from the bread Turner baked on it during the pandemic, she adds gold leaf, glitter spray, vintage sheet music and paper tree bark among other materials collaging and painting them over the parchment. The result is a series of overlaid impressions, both abstract art and moments of hope and sorrow. Like Biblical burnt offerings, the archival work traces a period of great loss and sacrifice and creates an almost holy elegy from the act of making bread. Turner’s work also has a sub-context of another burnt offering altogether, that of those lost to flame in the Holocaust and at Hiroshima.

Anita Getzler’s “Pieces of Mourning” is direct about its heartbreaking memorial for genocide and imprisonment. There are crushed rose petals and broken rose thorns in small jars, thorny branches wrapped in bronze wire, memorial yahrzeit candle holders containing old watches – like those taken from Holocaust victims – with the faces of the watches holding more crushed petals. Getzler also includes a scroll featuring the names of those sent to concentration camps when deported from a French village. As a memoir of stories told to the artist by her parents, who were themselves holocaust survivors, it is deeply moving. As a work of art, it is a stunning mix of dark textures illuminated with the flickering glow of the brass wires, an electric yahrzeit lamp, and a spirit of love.

Brighter notes are sounded in Jason Jenn’s “sharing a seat with the poets,” depicting a mentor/mentee relationship, a tribute to chosen family. Arrayed along a settee, are precious minerals, plants and books. Colorful light plays with shadows on these special objects chosen to represent knowledge and growth, wisdom, and joy. Pillows on the floor represent the seating or and a conversation between the parties in the relationship, and a sense of warmth and love pervades the sculptural grouping.

In the exhibition’s darkroom, Kayla Tange’s “A Chance to Be Seen” glows. A sculptural display of illuminated documents of her adoption and letters between herself and her mother, the piece explores the complications of origin, human commodification, and the potency of artistic transformation. Ibuki Kuramochi’s “Prenatal Memory and Species” turns toward a larger picture, going beyond the personal to evolution, the maternal process, and the beginning of human life in her mysterious and evocative mix of projected media, chains, and a silicone pregnant belly. Expressing a fascinating connection between personal longing Serena JV Elston’s sculpture “Elemental Hunger” is among several richly involving works by the artist. As with other works in the exhibition, there is a visceral element, here the heat from the electric hot plate coil serving as the spiral center to the piece. Jessica Wimbley offers a beautiflu video collage that explores spiritual and physical edges, in “Edges.” The piece uses hair as a space for memory and storytelling.

Other works not discussed in depth are equally intrinsic parts of Memories of Tomorrow’s Sunrise, including a series of fine porcelain sculptures by Marne Lucas and vibrant mixed media from Marval A. Rex connecting mind to body.

While many artists have created work that recalls dark events, the overall experience of the exhibition is that of hope and resilience. If art is a mirror, this mirror reflects memories, including and perhaps especially the traumatic ones, and alchemizes them with the magic that makes us human. Art grants artist and viewer alike the strength of spirit that allows us to take a good long look into the past, which is, after all, what today will be – tomorrow.

The exhibition runs through July 15^th, with a closing event that day; a Zoom artist talk is set for June 28^th, and an in-person performance scheduled for July 6^th. The Ronald H. Silverman Gallery is located in the California State University campus Fine Arts Building.

• Genie Davis; photos by Genie Davis