Advertisement
Exhibition Dates: March 27th - May 9th“Chinese-ish” is an exhibition about Anika Schneider redefining her identity on her own terms. With an Asian Mixed female identity, she resides in a highly racialized body that also exists in a liminal state. The connection to this liminal state of being transports her work to themes of loss, transitional spaces, and visualizing the intangible. Schneider is a narrative artist who draws on lived experiences, memory, and family photography.
Chinese bird and flower paintings were stuck in her head during the creation of this exhibition. The one piece of artwork her parents ever purchased was a Chinese bird and flower oil painting from an antique shop. It hangs in their living room along with other items of traditional Chinese imagery, chopstick holders, fans, vases. The images and motifs on these objects are a part of her lived experience, yet they also feel separated from her like artifacts of a past she does not fully know.
Schneider’s work manipulates and reimagines Chinese imagery through a multimedia approach including painting, monoprint etchings and ceramics, translating the visual influences she grew up with into her own story as a way to deepen her connection to the culture of her ancestors. The Chinese aspects of this work are at once deeply familiar and distant to her. Through the act of recreating and restructuring Chinese symbols, Anika is creating her own narrative of what it means to be Chinese, to have a Chinese family, and yet struggle with cultural gaps. The work plays off of what is considered Chinese but reframes it to create a visual identity that is distinctly her own.
Anika Schneider received her MFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design. For her undergraduate studies, she received a Bachelors of Science with a double major in Environmental Studies and Studio Art from Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, PA. Anika’s work has been exhibited nationally at galleries such as Rosalux Gallery, Gallery B St Paul, Circle Gallery, Visarts, Dumbarton Concert Gallery, and Glen Echo Park Partnership for Arts and Culture. Anika has also participated in residencies in Wolfsville, Nova Scotia and Solomons Island, Maryland. She was awarded a Windgate University Fellowship and the Gettysburg College Provost Grant. Recently she completed her first public mural for the City of Brooklyn Center and MN Metro Transit. Anika currently lives and works in Minneapolis where she enjoys giving a home to second hand furniture and hiking with her dog Wolly.
This exhibition is in honor of SooVAC's founder Suzy Greenberg and her commitment in supporting the Master of Fine Arts program at MCAD. Anika Schneider was selected for this exhibition by curator Pujan Gandhi.
More on Anika's exhibition can be found at www.soovac.org/chinese-ish-anika-schneider
Advertisement
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
soovac, 2909 Bryant Ave S, Suite 101, Minneapolis, United States