Curatorial Perspectives on The Burdens of History

Anna Walker is curator of the 2020 NCECA Annual, The Burdens of History, which will open in Richmond Virginia in March 2020. The exhibition will feature the work five invited artists: Nicki Green, Jennifer Ling Datchuk, Raven Halfmoon, and Issac Logsdon, and Woody De Othello. Logsdon is a mestizo artist whose work and writing examines historic events to better understand the value of cultural property. Through artificial museum display, selective archiving and one-sided written accounts, he explores incomplete conceptions we formulate about the past. Green is a transdisciplinary artist whose work focuses on craft processes. Her sculptures, ritual objects and flat works explore topics of history preservation, conceptual ornamentation and aesthetics of otherness. Halfmoon is an artist of the Caddo Nation. Based in Norman, Oklahoma, she studied ceramics/painting and cultural anthropology. The work of Datchuk, child of a Chinese immigrant and grandchild of Russian and Irish immigrants, investigates family histories of conflict and inherited identity. She explores the emotive power of domestic objects and rituals that fix, organize, soothe, and beautify our lives. Trained in ceramics, she employs materials ranging from porcelain to textiles. California based Othello’s work animates everyday objects and isolated body parts into strange, humorous characters. He joins virtuosic skills in the medium of clay affinity to a surreal exploration of ceramic history and imagery. From the face jugs of enslaved Africans in the American South, to the work of such Bay Area masters of funk as Robert Arneson and Viola Frey, to the sculpture of Robert Gober.