OCA exhibition examines the connection between body and landscape through female eyes | News, sports, jobs

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Chelsea Call’s “Muley Memory 1” will run from December 10th to February 20th as part of “LAND BODY” presented by Ogden Contemporary Arts.

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This still from the video shows a scene from “Wasl” by Sama Alshaibi, part of “LAND BODY” presented by Ogden Contemporary Arts from December 10th to February 20th.

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“Ridgeline” by Al Denyer will run from December 10th to February 20th as part of “LAND BODY” presented by Ogden Contemporary Arts.

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“Desert Frottage” by Jill O’Bryan will run from December 10th to February 20th as part of “LAND BODY” presented by Ogden Contemporary Arts.

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Jaclyn Wright’s Untitled will run from December 10th to February 20th as part of LAND BODY presented by Ogden Contemporary Arts.

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The new winter exhibition at the OCA, “LAND BODY”, opens on Friday, December 10th, 2021, from 5pm to 8pm

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“LAND BODY” is a new winter exhibition at Ogden Contemporary Arts that explores the connections between the human body and its landscapes from the perspective of 11 artists who identify women and opens on December 10th from 5 to 8 pm at the OCA Center in Ogden.

It is the first curatorial project at the OCA for Kelly Carper, an independent art consultant, curator, and art writer currently based in Ogden. The OCA Center is a huge space, but Carper has brought the concept and artists together for “LAND BODY” with ease over the past two months, an impressively short time for a dynamic group show.

The works on display are intertwined with topics such as environmental and climate issues, female identity, human impact on nature, and more, with an emphasis on desert environments by artists from Utah, New Mexico, and Arizona across a variety of media. Carper said that working with a non-profit organization like OCA was a wonderful experience that enabled her to attract foreign artists to the project.

Carper’s idea for the “LAND BODY” concept was triggered by the multimedia installation “Battleground” by the Utah-based artist Wendy Wischer, which is shown for the first time in this exhibition. In the extensive work, Wischer compares land ownership and management as well as the politics within the property with female corporations.

“The body and the landscape have been explored comparatively throughout art history, especially with female connotations and from the perspective of male artists,” Carper said in a press release. “’LAND BODY’ is a contemporary exploration of this inherent relationship with artists of different cultural backgrounds. The exhibition creates metaphorical and physical connections between desert landscapes and women’s bodies and at the same time reflects the networking between humans and nature. “

Carper added a comment to her concept for “LAND BODY,” based in part on the idea that the connection between body and landscape has been explored throughout art history, mostly from a male perspective, from “life-giving images of Mother Earth to lying ones.” Nudes in the garden during “the Renaissance and the Land Art Movement of the 1970s,” citing Utah’s Spiral Jetty as an example of the male bravery and strength expressed in art. “But women artists were also important for this movement,” she said.

All exhibited works react to the landscape from a female perspective and different cultural origins. Some bring the body directly in, Carper said, while others use it as a metaphor or in the making of the work. Jill O’Bryan’s “Desert Frottage”, for example, traces the interactions between her body and the desert in large-format drawings. Chelsea Call’s photographs on display capture her immersive experience in the Bears Ears National Monument, and Brazilian-born artist Josie Bell’s paintings combine human emotions with the landscape using natural materials “to depict the beauty of the earth and its scars, often through abstract figurative forms ”. These artists have connected directly with nature in creating their works.

Others are cultural-historical narratives that are told through photography and film. In her film “Stages of Tectonic Blackness”, Nikesha Breeze speaks about the African diaspora, which “refers to the parallel processes of dehumanization and extraction, emergence and rebellion, as carried by black bodies and rocky bodies”. The Indian photographer Cara Romero, an artist living in Sante Fe, conveys in her pictures the hypersexualization of indigenous women in the history of photography and the environmental destruction of the indigenous people.

Desert landscapes of the Middle East and North Africa are represented in Sama Alshaibi’s video work “Wasl (Union)”, which brings to light the “connections between cultures threatened by displacement due to increasing water scarcity and rising sea levels”. Galician filmmakers Sonia and Miriam Albert-Sobrino, known collectively as the Also Sisters, present an immersive digital installation in the galleries on the second floor of OCA that uses “dreamy and confusing” images of the female body moving through changing landscapes .

Utah-based artist Jaclyn Wright also explores the exploitation of land and the female body through her photographic work, while Al Denyer, another Utah-based artist originally from England, shows work in a new medium she uses with threads and Yarn brings attention to traditionally feminine handicrafts and classical notions of femininity in art and its relationship to landscape.

The collection that inspired “LAND BODY”, Wendy Wischer’s “Battlegrounds”, includes a large floor sculpture on the ground floor of the gallery in the form of a broken, mirrored tree. “You literally see your body being thrown back towards you by a tree,” said Carper. “As soon as you enter the room, you see yourself in the exhibition.”

It is just one of many interactive and captivating installations that Carper hopes visitors can immerse themselves in – and “be more integrated into nature and create more awareness of the bond between our bodies and the earth” will be to take away.

“LAND BODY” presented by Ogden Contemporary Arts is a free exhibit made possible by Weber County RAMP, the Utah Office of Tourism, the Utah Legislature, and the Utah Division of Arts & Museums. It will open to the public on December 10 at the OCA Center, 455 25th St. in Ogden, and will run until February 20, 2022.

Further information can be found at ogdencontemporaryarts.org.

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