Belonging Curated by Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy
Hosted by:
Crocker Art Museum
216 O Street
Sacramento, CA 95814
www.crockerart.org
(916) 808-7000
ENTRY DEADLINE: Wednesday, September 8, 2021 (11:59pm MDT)
EXHIBITION DATES: February 20 – May 8, 2022
ABOUT THE 2022 NCECA ANNUAL
Belonging, the 2022 NCECA Annual exhibition will be one of the cornerstone events of the upcoming conference in Sacramento, California. The Crocker Art Museum will be dedicating more than 4,000 square feet of space to the exhibition’s installation. Curator Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy has invited artists Alex Anderson, Natalia Arbelaez, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Salvador Jimenez-Flores, and Habiba El-Sayed whose works will ground key concepts while generating an expanded framework for inclusion of works by additional artists that will be selected through an open call for submission. Writing about her organizing ideas and motivations for the exhibition, Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy shares the following:
A sense of belonging implies an affinity or connectedness with a place, social or cultural group. Belonging is survival. It is a powerful feeling that shapes our identity. While achieving a sense of belonging is fulfilling when realized, it can be a laborious and even painful endeavor otherwise. Belonging strongly signifies spatial relationships, from navigating new territories to remaining rooted in formative places long vacated. Efforts to balance attachments to past and present spaces may evoke nostalgia and dissonance. Many also seek a connection to their ancestors and their land despite distance. Voluntary and involuntary migration has profoundly impacted millions’ sense of belonging through disrupted lineages, loss of material culture and narratives, and disconnection from land. Belonging explores the intangible and tangible approaches we engage in developing and maintaining our sense of connectedness across time and space. Belonging also relates to ownership or possession, an interpretation that has caused much harm to humans, non-human species, and natural resources. This exhibition seeks to upend normalized power dynamics by prioritizing humans’ desire to belong to something instead of things belonging to them.
Acceptance or lack thereof also intertwine with a sense of belonging. Identity forms at the intersection of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class, among other categories. While these markers can be keys to unlocking a sense of belonging, we may experience rejection and exclusion without the embrace of others. An affinity to any entity also necessitates bearing the weight of associated histories and realities. For example, belonging to the United States constitutes acknowledging that we live on Indigenous land, its brutal history of slavery, continuous misogyny, xenophobia, transphobia, homophobia, and systemic racism that disproportionally affects Black and Brown people. At the root of these issues lies the negation of belonging towards particular groups of people, namely people of color, LGBTQAI, and women, as dictated by colonialist and patriarchal white supremacist ideals. The exhibition Belonging will also showcase the coded ways in which we navigate inhospitable environments, push back against oppressive systems that deny belonging, and the role of community in fostering inclusion.
ABOUT CURATOR ANGELIK VIZCARRONDO-LABOY
Angelik Vizcarrondo-Laboy (She/Her) is a New York and Los Angeles-based curator, writer, and arts administrator of contemporary art and craft. Her current research focuses on the subversive power of humor, cuteness, and leisure as tools of protest. Amplifying the voices of BIPOC artists is central to her practice. She serves as Assistant Curator at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), New York. She has helped the curatorial team organize over twenty exhibitions since 2016, including 2021’s Craft Front & Center. She also oversees MAD’s Burke Prize, a prestigious contemporary craft award. Recent projects include exhibitions Sleight of Hand (2020) at the Center for Craft, North Carolina, where she was a 2020 curatorial fellow, and Clay Is Just Thick Paint (2020) at Greenwich House Pottery, New York. She has also contributed to Cultured and American Craft magazines and catalogs at MAD and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, Nebraska. She earned her MA from the Bard Graduate Center, New York, in Decorative Arts, Design History, & Material Culture.
ABOUT THE CROCKER ART MUSEUM
The Crocker Art Museum features the world’s foremost display of California art and is renowned for its holdings of European master drawings and international ceramics. The Crocker serves as the primary regional resource for the study and appreciation of fine art and offers a diverse spectrum of exhibitions, events, and programs to augment its collections, including films, concerts, studio classes, lectures, children’s activities, and more. The Museum has also dedicated the historic building’s entire first floor as an education center, which includes four classrooms, space for student and community exhibitions, the Gerald Hansen Library, and Tot Land. It is the only museum in the Sacramento region accredited by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), a recognition given to fewer than 1,100 of the nation’s 33,000 museums. AAM accreditation certifies that a museum operates according to standards set forth by the museum profession, manages its collections responsibly, and provides quality service to the public.
Full details HERE.
