Name: social geographies
Start: 2024-10-06T15:00:00-05:00
Location: Kunstraum LLC

social geographies
September 15 - October 20th, 2024
Part 1: Opening Reception: Sunday, September 15th from 4-6pm
Part 2: Opening Reception; Sunday. October 6th from 4-6pm
Curated by Katelynn Dunn
Artists: Viviane Roi, Lafina Eptiminitaki, Luísa Ramires, Jiyoung Song, Jean Oh, Daniel McKleinfeld, Erika Choe, Francis Cai, Howard Skrill, Jamaica Fredericks, Natalie Jacobs, Anne Hamilton, Vanessa Alvarez, and Ailyn Lee.
KUNSTRAUM LLC is pleased to present social geographies, an exhibition of paintings, screen printed and sewn textiles, drawings, photographs, videos, and sculptural works by fifteen selected artists from KUNSTRAUM’s residency program and community of artists. The show is a continuation of dialogue on the backdrop of constructed narratives and their disparity in myriad forms. The artworks portray the tangible, emotional, historic, and technological manifestations of present social realities, sovereign places, as they come to the fore of discussion. In tandem they present disruptions to our perspectives of social geographies as well as desires and poetic mappings of them. Through a two-part, rotating exhibition, artworks will be on display between September 15th and October 6th.
social geographies is a play on the Letterist International’s, and later Situationist International’s, psychogeography, which is a concept meant to break down the dichotomy of culture and life through psychological inquiry into the built environment and personal navigations through constructed space. SI’s imperative quite literally seeks to flee the false consciousness and alienation under capitalism. The practice of drifting, or of wandering on an unplanned journey, was a key component of this and offers a mode of moving beyond prescribed boundaries. Further to this, the exhibition is inspired by the many ways of glitching and how these may subvert the contextual reality of drawn lines. If “we are faced with the reality that we will never be given the keys to a utopia architected by hegemony,” then perhaps we must see how viruses, errors, and refusals – divergences – can make way for new ways of embracing.
In bringing together psychogeography and decolonization, forming an identity beyond the colonized body becomes an option as borders outside the bounds of hegemonic histories can be created. Interpersonal connections are favored instead of profit or gain as arbitrary routes or routes without destination or motivation without purpose occur. An example is Erika Choe’s Ghost of my shell (2024) as a sort of homage to Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction, representing the material and formal reality of a porous skin sac that begs the question, can we leave our bodies behind? Can my body leak into yours? The tender work taps into the desire of the artist to defy the impoverished barrier of the body and real delineated borders to permeate into other beings. Even though technology has led to hyper-connectivity of the globe through the internet as we know it today, our human desires to connect grow even deeper than reality or virtuality allow.
As well, the in between places present themselves through cracks and misalignments, through distorted views and unpleasant scenes. These open space for other forms of knowing as well as connecting and existing. For example, the atrocity of war is presented in Daniel McKleinfeld’s Bourne (2023) where he has collaged images of nationalistic regimes with computer graphics. Speaking to the violence in Ukraine, the desire to find cooperation arises albeit from a distanced perspective. Viviane Roi’s In a Wildfire Unobserved (2024) makes comparisons between anomalous scenes that posit the real and digital worlds are not reflections of one another, disrupting the audience’s ritualized admiration of online viewing. In Lafina Eptaminitaki’s 68 Hours 48 Minutes (Lemon Yellow), 2024 and 72 Hours 22 Minutes (Naples Yellow), 2024 she presents an imperfect grid. Subtle cracks in the dried paint are revealed after her struggle to fill the squares with a medium that’s purpose is made for blending instead of straight and perfect lines. The grid is a motif for cartographers and draughts people. It also represents connectivity and the internet. The imperfections speak to change and corrosion of structures over time as fallacies in the foundations of space become more prevalent with close examination.
social geographies presents an inquiry into social horizons instead of drawn geographical lines, which lead to further multi-disciplinarity and intersectionality in our lives. In a constantly dynamic realm of common viewership and participation both globally and locally, provocations are made for departures and new confluences. The space of the social is malleable and delicate and also constantly deteriorating and forming new.

PUBLIC PROGRAMS
Opening Reception: Group 1: Sunday, September 15th, 4-6pm RSVP
Curator-Led Tour: Group 1: Sunday, September 29th, 3:30-4pm RSVP
Closing Reception: Group 1: Sunday, September 29th, 4-6pm RSVP
Opening Reception: Group 2: Sunday, October 6th, 4-6pm RSVP
Curator-Led Tour: Group 2: Sunday, October 20th 3:30-4pm RSVP
Closing Reception: Group 2: Sunday, October 20th, 4-6pm RSVP