House Calls

VIRTUAL STUDIO VISITS WITH MICHIGAN ARTISTS IN A PANDEMIC

Screenshot from House Calls series. Clockwise from top left: Amanda Krugliak, artist Yen Azzaro, Angela Abioudun, and Juliet Hinely.

As the university moved to remote classes and work in the midst of the COVID-19 public health crisis, so did the physical space of our gallery. In this time of shared vulnerability and isolation, it felt imperative that we be responsive and connect directly with the artists in our communities. With the support of a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we translated plans for a summer regional art exhibition into our newly created web series House Calls: Virtual Studio Visits with Michigan Artists in a Pandemic. Every week for ten weeks, our gallery team made a virtual studio visit to a regional artist from communities across the state of Michigan. Each artist was commissioned to participate in the project and receives an honorarium for their engagement.

Our outreach and impact was immediate, like a first aid kit for artists, asking the questions, “How are you doing?” “What is the value of the arts during times of crisis?” “How do you find hopefulness in this moment?” The series offers a twist on the more predictable gallery visit format which is often carefully choreographed, formal, “ready for company.” House Calls focuses on something more personal instead.

As artists walked us through their spaces, very real conversations in the midst of crisis emerged. Sarah Rose Sharp discussed the strength she has drawn from going through the pandemic while living in Detroit. Judy Bowman from Romulus showed us art created with her 90-year-old mother while in isolation together. Sajeev Visweswaran, who splits his time between Ann Arbor and New Delhi, India, touched on his sense of privilege in being able to go through the pandemic in the U.S. instead of India.

In all these small details, it becomes apparent that our human connections are what remain most critical. We are reminded of what’s missing—all the comings and goings, the ideas shared, the small human exchanges that make our university and communities vibrant. House Calls offers intimacy and sustenance during a time of social distancing, reaffirming that our human relationships and our commitment to one another can be reparative even in a new world unrecognizable.

Watch the House Calls series at http://myumi.ch/BolAQ.

HOUSE CALLS ARTIST LINEUP Sarah Rose Sharp, Detroit Sajeev Visweswaran, Ann Arbor and New Delhi, India Judy Bowman, Romulus Mandy Cano Villalobos, Grand Rapids Lavinia Hanachiuc, Ann Arbor Rashaun Rucker, Detroit Yen Azzaro, Ypsilanti Ricky Weaver, Ypsilanti Ijania Cortez, Detroit Levon Kafafian, Detroit

HH(C)*/AN AMERICAN INTERIOR Valery Jung Estabrook

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Valery Jung Estabrook was born in Plantation, Florida, and grew up on an organic pear farm in rural southwestern Virginia. She holds an MFA in drawing and painting from Brooklyn College and a BA in visual art from Brown University. Her work has been exhibited in major cities both domestically and internationally, including New York, Los Angeles, Lagos, Bilbao, and Melbourne. In 2018 she received the Gold AHLT&W Foundation Contemporary Visual Art Award, an annual award recognizing artists of Korean heritage in the United States. She currently resides in Albuquerque and teaches experimental art at the University of New Mexico.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION: *Hometown Hero (Chink): An American Interior re-creates a lifesize living room sewn by hand, suggestive of the artist’s history

HH(C): An American Interior installation by Valery Jung Estabrook.

growing up in rural southwestern Virginia. The installation includes a custom upholstered recliner embellished with a Confederate flag motif, and a plush TV emanating country music karaoke sung by the artist.The exhibition challenges the notions of heritage, Southern nationalism and “traditional” American culture, providing a window into the tensions of being a perpetual foreigner in one’s own hometown. Reflecting on her exhibition title, Estabrook states, “The second part of the title, ‘chink,’ is a word that is fundamentally linked to my lifelong experience as an Asian American. Yes, it’s offensive—an incredibly painful slur. But that same pain is something that I, unfortunately, think of when I think of home. I include it because I must in order to have an honest discussion about the America that I know.”

RELATED EVENTS: Opening Reception and Artist Conversation

LOOK 101: Seeing Art in an Instagram World, the Art of Valery Jung Estabrook

700+ UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS WHO TOURED OUR EXHIBITIONS THROUGH CLASS VISITS.

YO TENGO NOMBRE Ruth Leonela Buentello, Efroymson Emerging Artist in Residence

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Ruth Leonela Buentello is an interdisciplinary artist from San Antonio, TX. She is known to create narratives based on her Xicana identity. She received her Bachelors of Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011 and is a recipient of the 2017 Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors grant. She is currently a full tuition scholar at Maine College of Art where she will receive her MFA in 2021.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION: This series of paintings was inspired by the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy and the images of migrant families being separated and detained at the US-Mexico border that dominated media outlets across the nation since the summer of 2017. Focusing on images from the US media sources that exposed the violence of migrants’ dehumanization, vulnerability, fear, loss, and criminalization, the paintings document the embodiment of state-authorized brutality and erasures of personhood.

RELATED EVENTS: Opening Reception and Artist Conversation

LOOK 101: Seeing Art in an Instagram World, the Art of Ruth Leonela Buentello

Stories of Refuge installation by Tania El Khoury.

STORIES OF REFUGE Tania El Khoury

ABOUT THE ARTIST: Tania El Khoury is a contemporary artist whose work focuses on audience interactivity and is concerned with the ethical and political potential of such encounters. She creates installations and performances in which the audience is an active collaborator. She was a 2019 Soros Art Fellow and the recipient of the Bessies Outstanding Production Award, the International Live Art Prize, the Total Theatre Innovation Award, and the Arches Brick Award. El Khoury holds a PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London. She is associated with Forest Fringe collective of artists in the UK and is a co-founder of Dictaphone Group in Lebanon.

ABOUT THE INSTALLATION: Since the beginning of the Syrian revolution in 2011, Syrian refugees have been fleeing the brutal regime in search of safe haven. Munich, Germany, is one of the cities where many Syrian refugees land after crossing unofficial borders through different European countries. Tania El Khoury, and her art collective Dictaphone Group, collaborated with a group of Syrian refugees who had recently arrived in Munich. El Khoury gave each of these participants/ collaborators a discreet camera for a day, their only instructions being to film their daily lives in Munich. Together they produced three videos, presented in this installation and viewed from bunk bed barracks in the gallery.

RELATED EVENTS: “As Far As My Fingertips Take Me,” presented in conjunction with the University Musical Society HOUSE CALLS