Join EFA Project Space, the 2020/2021 SHIFT Residents, and exhibition curator danilo machado for a closing reception and catalog release for the cohort’s end of residency exhibition, We turn.

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To turn is to change position, to gain or lose a vantage point, to enter a new circumstance. In this exhibition, the artists of the 2020-2021 EFA SHIFT Residency consider many kinds of turns and many kinds of “we.” Through a range of material and forms—including video, collage, ceramic, photography, installation, and painting—the work presented conjures the “we” of specific communities and collective efforts, many made tenuous under pandemic circumstances. Indeed, an underlying “we” is the residency itself and the circumstances in which these artists and art workers inhabited studios and homes, and built relationships with each other. 

These artists negotiate the role of the individual, the archive, and of documentation through tactics of tactility, narrative, and abstraction. In doing so, they conjure larger histories of labor, colonialism, and environment, and consider alternatives to representation, binaries, and disclosure. The presentation of this exhibition is in part a consideration of the consequences of materiality, objectness, and touch after a year of the forced virtual. As pandemic, protest, and loss continue, what do we turn towards or away from? Who do we turn to for care? Where do we turn for community? While not all of the work in this exhibition is a direct address to the current context, the broader questions posed by it remain urgent. 

Curated by danilo machado.