 – An exhibition, “The Significance of the Middle” features the work of Katayoun Amjadi and Ellie Kingsbury, opening Friday, January 13 at 6:00 pm in…){kind=link}
BLOOMINGTON, MN – (PNAN) – An exhibition, “The Significance of the Middle” features the work of Katayoun Amjadi and Ellie Kingsbury, opening Friday, January 13 at 6:00 pm in the Inez Greenberg Gallery in the Bloomington Center for the Arts, will remain on view through February 17, 2017.
Artists Amjadi and Kingsbury are both exploring “the middle” in their work. The “middle” can refer to many things including mid-life, the in-between place of multi-cultural identity, marginalized individuals, the place we may find ourselves when we’re in between careers, relationships, major life decisions, or the gap that may exist in our lives for many different reasons.
The installation piece and video by Amjadi uses the classically symbolic pomegranate image as a motif that encompasses issues around multi-cultural identity, femininity, life and death as well as the pervasiveness of decorative and material goods.
Kingsbury’s striking black and white photography puts us face to face with similar issues of identity, mortality and issues of beauty and materialism, both as individuals and as a culture. By juxtaposing images of middle-aged nudes with garden produce, Kingsbury forces us to question the Western belief system that values youth before age and novelty over tradition.
Both artist’s works are highly personal and universal, but these installations allow us to consider our own fragile and fleeting place in the larger human landscape. Together Amjadi and Kingsbury dare us to contemplate both the challenges and magnificence that exists with us all in “the middle.”
There will be an Artist Talk: Tuesday, January 31, 201 at 7:00 pm. For more information, see: www.artistrymn.org or call 952.563.8575.
About
Katayoun Amjadi is currently a Teacher Assistant and MFA candidate at the U of M. Previously, she was Assistant to the Gallery Director at the Circa Gallery and Curatorial Intern for the Department of Contemporary Art at Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
Her work has been exhibited in several group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally, including Minnesota Museum of American Arts, Instinct Art Gallery, Weisman Art Museum, Beijing Film Academy and 7Samar Gallery in Tehran.
Amjadi received her BFA in Studio Arts from the University of Minnesota in 2013. She is a fiscal year 2015 recipient of an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. She was born in Tehran, Iran and resides in Minneapolis, Minnesota and maintains a studio in the Q.arma building in NE Arts District.
Ellie Kingsbury’s photography centers around the beauty and life force found in the mundane. Ellie received a McKnight Fellowship for her project “Automatic Beyond Belief”, a story of Industrial Design Age kitchen appliances. She is also a two-time recipient of the Artist Initiative grant through the Minnesota State Arts Board. She has shown both nationally and internationally, including group shows in Beijing, Santa Monica, San Francisco, and Portland OR, and locally including Katherine Nash Gallery, St. Catherine University, and the Phipps Gallery.
The Artistry is a regional arts nonprofit serving more than 80,000 people annually through theater, visual arts, arts education, and creative placemaking programs. Artistry is a proud participant in the Twin Cities Ivey Awards and one of seven nonprofit organizations based in the Bloomington Center for the Arts.