Seven Artists to Interact with the Huntington's Collections in Exhibition this Fall
SAN MARINO, Calif.— The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens will present new work and related programming this fall by seven artists who conducted research in The Huntington’s collections during the second year of a five-year initiative called /five, which this year is based on the theme of “collecting” and “collections.” The exhibition “Collection/s: WCCW/five at The Huntington,” on view in the Virginia Steele Scott Galleries of American Art from Nov. 18, 2017, through Feb. 12, 2018, will feature an installation of paintings, sculpture, textiles, video, writings, and other new works along with performances, talks, and tours by the artists, all of whom are women. They include Olivia Chumacero, Sarita Dougherty, Jheanelle Garriques, Zya S. Levy, Soyoung Shin, kerrie welsh, and Juliana Wisdom, who were selected in collaboration with the Los Angeles-based Women’s Center for Creative Work (WCCW).
“Collection/s: WCCW/five at The Huntington” comes out of /five, a contemporary arts collaboration between The Huntington and five different organizations over five years. /five invites artists to respond to a range of themes drawn from The Huntington’s deep and diverse library, art, and botanical collections. The initiative is led by Jenny Watts, The Huntington’s curator of photography and visual culture, and Catherine Hess, The Huntington’s chief curator of European art and acting director of its art collections. In /five’s first year (2016), The Huntington collaborated with JPL/NASA to present the JPL sound sculpture “Orbit Pavilion,” which referenced The Huntington’s history of aerospace, astronomy, and earth science collections.
For the second year of the initiative, The Huntington chose WCCW, a nonprofit organization that cultivates feminist creative communities and practices, to explore the theme of collecting and collections. The resulting projects for “Collection/s: WCCW/five at The Huntington” are described below. The seven artists will engage with The Huntington’s three collecting areas, with two projects each exploring the library, art, and botanical collections. As they become available, details about related events will be posted at huntington.org.
The Library Collections
Jheanelle Garriques
Garriques is the founder and executive director of Naked Narratives, a writing program that encourages its participants to confidently express themselves while resolving past traumas. Her project for “Collection/s: WCCW/five at The Huntington” is called “Storytelling, Solidarity, and the Blue Stockings Society,” and uses The Huntington’s Elizabeth Montagu archive as inspiration for a mixed-media spoken word performance. Montagu (1718-1800) was a founder of the Blue Stockings Society, a British movement that encouraged intellectualism among women through literary discussions—or, as Garriques defines it: “one of the world’s first feminist writing salons.” The archive contains some 7,000 letters written to or by Montagu. Garriques’ project will juxtapose a handful of letters with new writing produced by a local writing salon of eight participants. Her performance piece will involve the participants and dance choreographed by Rissi Zimmermann.
kerrie welsh
Welsh’s work pushes the boundaries between personal and cultural memory and between social and artistic conventions. A Ph.D. candidate at UC Santa Cruz focusing on female authorship, LGBT desires, and the birth of cinema, she also co-founded the Women in the Director’s Chair Oral History Project at the New York University Tisch School of the Arts. Her project, “What You Love,” collects LGBT letters, testimonies, and diaries to create an archive of contemporary love stories. Inspired by The Huntington’s rare book and theatre holdings relating to the ancient Greek poet Sappho, the project investigates the story of Olga Nethersole (1863-1951), a controversial and popular British actress who portrayed Sappho on stages across Europe and the United States. It will include correspondence with the local LGBT community and collected ephemera evidencing LGBT lives and loves, and the vulnerability of these kinds of materials to destruction, due to secrecy, shame, and fear.
The Art Collections
Soyoung Shin
Shin is a multidisciplinary Korean-American artist working in textiles, performance, zines, and new media. Her project for the exhibition, “Picture Elements,” is drawn from the word “pixel,” which is an abbreviation of “picture element.” Centered on The Huntington’s historic carpet Astrology (on view in the Huntington Art Gallery’s large library), one of 93 carpets commissioned around 1665 by King Louis XIV to line the Grand Gallery of the Louvre, Shin’s project investigates the anonymity of women who engaged in the creation of textiles without receiving credit, in the same way contemporary women rarely receive credit for their roles in emerging technologies. “Picture Elements” will take the form of textiles, including fragments of a Savonnerie carpet currently in storage, a computer program, a book, and a series of lectures.
Juliana Wisdom
A sculptor and porcelain production assistant, Wisdom is developing new work in response to The Huntington’s 18th-century French porcelain collection. Emulating the Sèvres Porcelain Manufactory’s techniques with both traditional and new materials, four new works will seek to broaden the historical narrative of the Sèvres Manufactory by including the often-uncredited women who were both makers and benefactors of Sèvres.
The Botanical Gardens
Olivia Chumacero
Chumacero studied film at UC Santa Cruz and is the founder of Everything Is Medicine, a project that involves workshops, hikes, and other initiatives to raise awareness of native California flora, sustainable water use, and the respectful use of lands belonging to indigenous groups. Working in conjunction with Sarita Dougherty, her contribution to “Collection/s: WCCW/five at The Huntington,” will be a video, “When Light Married Water,” in which the relationship of light and water gives birth to native California flora in both the manicured and the uncultivated areas of The Huntington’s grounds. Chumacero is working with Sarita Dougherty on a collaborative project.
Sarita Dougherty
Dougherty generates and paints habitats from found plants and cultural ephemera. With an MFA from UCLA, she is currently researching the Inca fertility goddess Pachamama in connection with aesthetics, ecology, and education. Her project for the exhibition, “Domestic Flora Familiars,” consists of four paintings relating to plants on The Huntington’s grounds along with a printed cloth screen, of the type used in home décor, inspired by Chumacero’s video.
Zya S. Levy
Levy is the co-founder of “We the Weeds,” a collaborative botanical arts project based in Philadelphia that highlights the presence of the natural world within the manmade landscape. Her project, “Green-Gold,” explores the desert garden collection at The Huntington to draw links between early plant collectors, botanical origins, migration stories, a sense of place, and the future of biological diversity. “Green-Gold” will consist of a visual catalogue of cacti diversity in The Huntington’s Desert Garden, a short audio collage, and sculpture, as well as a series of offsite urban plant tours.
