A new exhibit in The Fine Arts Gallery at Landmark College explores issues of social justice and injustice through the multimedia works of Lani Asuncion, Nima Nikakhlagh, Vick Quezada and William Ransom.
Curated by Landmark College Associate Professor of Arts Samuel Rowlett, “In the Course of Human Events” opened on February 15 and will be on display through April 21, 2023 in the Fine Arts Gallery, which is open to the public daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Rowlett says the exhibition title, taken from the first line of the Declaration of Independence, offers a reminder of the deeply human complexities, tragedies, and hypocrisies inherent in the ongoing formation of our “more perfect union.”
“Gallery visitors will see themes related to human rights, socio-political critique and protest, and the lived experiences of artists and people where culture and society intersect,” says Rowlett.
The Landmark College Fine Arts Gallery is located in the Fine Arts Building on the Landmark College campus. For directions and a campus map, please visit www.landmark.edu and click the “Map and Directions” link at the bottom of the page.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Lani Asunción (they/she) is an interdisciplinary multimedia artist creating socially engaged art in both private and public spaces, independently and collaboratively. Weaving a visual language guided by historical research, community engagement, and experimental performance connected to their identity as a queer multiracial Filipinx-American. Asunción integrates new media technologies and transmedia storytelling through ritualized performance to encourage conversations that magnify connections to facilitate healing in the face of cultural violence, oppression, and ancestral intergenerational trauma narratives to generate community healing and collective cultural empowerment. https://laniasuncion.com/about
Nima Nikakhlagh is a multidisciplinary artist, native to Iran, who arrived in the United States in 2014. Often using interactive live performance and the written word his practice concerns itself with socio-political power dynamics, political resistance, and non-violent action approached in a poetic manner. Nima uses his body as both subject and object in the work, as a catalyst for action, and generator of potential outcomes. https://www.nimanikakhlagh.com
Vick Quezada (they/them) is an interdisciplinary artist that explores hybrid forms in Indigenous-Latinx history and the function of these histories in contested lands, primarily in the US-Mexico border region. Quezada categorically is a Rascuache Chicanx artist, one who repurposes and stylizes found objects. Their work explores liberation through an approach that is rooted in queer and Aztec Indigenous knowledge, histories, and aesthetics. http://vickquezada.com/about.html
William Ransom was born and raised on a Vermont dairy farm as the son of a white father and African American mother. Balance has always played an important role in his life and work, including the balance between black and white; Ransom’s work often reflects this sense of balance, suggesting flux, movement, things in a state of becoming or diminishing; a transitory provisional state, rife with an inherent unease and uncertainty. The forces brought to bear on the material pull into sharp focus the tensions and underlying instabilities and stresses of our world’s current state and the ever-present potential for flare-up or collapse. https://williamransom.art
