Anachronism and Liberation

Anachronism and Liberation presents nine artists, ranging from emerging to established, creating work that engages with social and/or political issues in subtle and surprising ways. The artists involved are all committed makers, whose approaches offer an expanded vision of what political art pieces that consider issues of imperialism, political oppression, labor rights, environmental justice, race, gender and sexuality can look like. The work deliberately connects to traditional practices and engages in dialog with art history; at the same time, it is powerfully responsive to the urgency of this political moment.

The show’s title refers to the notion of artists simultaneously looking backwards and forwards in their practices, employing the “anachronistic,” the aggressively handmade and historically informed, in service of “liberation,” both in the political sense of the word, and in a more personal, aesthetic sense. The artists’ connection to art history and traditions of making becomes a freeing component in their work, adding layers of complexity and allowing it to transcend beyond sloganeering or propaganda. Their art is suspended between traditional forms and liberatory meanings, in which forms of the past are celebrated, undermined, and re-construed in the effort to construct new futures. They return to traditional media with new purpose, using old resources to open possibilities for reconfigured identities, making ‘nonce’ forms mean something again.