18th Street Arts Center

Comments (0)

By rlopez, November 6, 2004 3:27 pm

Artists from the South Asian and Turkish Diaspora

November 6 – January 14, 2005

Featuring works by:

Gul Cagin
Allan deSouza
Andaleeb Firdosy
Arzu Arda Kosar
Meena Nanji

Organized by Andaleeb Firdosy

Opening reception event: Saturday, November 6, 6 – 8pm
1639 18th Street, Santa Monica

“A blurring of the world, a refocusing seconds, minutes, hours, days, maybe years later, with everything put together differently, in ways he doesn’t understand”, Allan deSouza, 2001

18th Street Arts Center in conjunction with Artwallah, presents the group art show, “Prism: Beyond the Focal Plane,” curated by Andaleeb Firdosy, November 6, 2004 – January 14, 2005 at 18th Street Arts Center, 1639 18th Street, Santa Monica. The reception will be Saturday, November 6, 6-8pm. The show opens and runs simultaneously with “Some of Parts,” a new sculptural installation by Hadiya Finley. Both exhibitions are funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

The second annual exhibition in the Prism series, which showcases contemporary art from South Asian and other international diasporas, “Prism: Beyond the Focal Plane” showcases five South Asian and Turkish artists in four new and recent installations and visual works that collectively express a cartography of geography, culture, language and art. From the work of Arzu Arda Kosar, who calls herself a “a student of the ways people divide land,” to Meena Nanji and Andaleeb Firdosy’s immersion piece where the viewer is the island in an electronic sea, “Prism” delves beyond the focal plane to suggest other lines of sight.

Arzu Arda Kosar’s LA County Potted renders the balkanized enclaves of LA County in a blossoming flower bed, creating abstract maps that literally carry the seeds of socio-cultural and political harmony and conflict. Gul Cagin’s Metallic Landscape is a piece that deals with our display culture in an attempt to depict the aftermath of the attraction to violence and the destruction wrought by war machines in an abstract, alternate world of paranoia. Allan deSouza’s series of large-scale photos of landscape assemblages delve into the socio-geographical relationship between the land itself and the iconic image of the city, which serve as repositories and stimuli for religious belief, moral value as well as collective identity, ownership, belonging and war. Meena Nanji and Andaleeb Firdosy’s Point of Origin addresses themes of migration, displacement, longing, loss and emergence of possibility. A five-monitor video installation plays footage of the ocean, a space between lands, cultures, past and future, the known and the unknown.

Comments (0)

By rlopez, November 6, 2004 3:24 pm

“Some of Parts”: A new sculptural installation by Hadiya Finley

November 6, 2004 – January 14, 2005

Reception event: Saturday, November 6, 6 – 8pm
1639 18th Street, Santa Monica

18th Street Arts Center presents a new mixed-media installation work by artist Hadiya Finley, November 6, 2004 – January 14, 2005 at 18th Street Arts Center, 1639 18th Street, Santa Monica. The reception will be Saturday, November 6, 6-8pm. This is the third show in a new exhibition series, entitled Spontaneous Combustion, dedicated to showcasing emerging contemporary artists in the greater Los Angeles area and funded by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The show will coincide with “Prism: Beyond the Focal Plane,” a group show of South Asian and Turkish artists living in Southern California and curated by Andaleeb Firdosy.

Hadiya Finley will create a new sculptural installation in 18th Street Arts Center’s Project Space, which will use a variety of materials and aesthetic techniques to stimulate the viewer’s subconscious. Following in the footsteps of her mentor, legendary assemblage artist George Herms, Finley employs, transfigures and breathes new, wondrous life into found objects combined with seemingly quotidian materials such as clay, wood, stones, plaster, cement, wire, fiberglass, and lightbulbs. She has exhibited locally at Armory Center for the Arts, Angels Gate Cultural Center, Claremont University, and Santa Monica College.

Hadiya Finley (Artist): “My work, fabricated from many different materials with a variety of techniques, often appears diverse, though thematically the pieces are all related. In this show, I am hoping to make these connections apparent while challenging viewers. My work is highly personal and comes from that place deep in me from that time before understanding when the unexplained and unexplainable of life with a schizophrenic brother took control. From this place come stories, dreams and fantasies in the form of sculptural pieces and paintings. Though highly personal, they spark imaginations and higher levels of understanding and bring up social and emotional issues in the viewer. I strive to create work that is both beautiful and disturbing, magical, thought-provoking and often humorous.”

ArtNight is made possible with the support of the City of Santa Monica, Santa Monica Arts Commission, Crossroads School for the Arts and Sciences, Hypnotiq, and IZZE.