to tongue-tie

Halal (2019) by Raheleh Filsoofi

A multimedia gallery show.

In conjunction with the performances of mouthful included as part of thingNY’s run of Natural Studies for the Exponential Festival, To tongue-tie is a curatorial exhibition project that shares video and object-based work at the edges of language. Highlighting work that speaks to layered forms of ancestry, (food) consumption, and the body, this exhibition brings together pieces and collaborations by Gelsey Bell+Erik Ruin, Mel Carter, Benedicto Figueroa, Raheleh Filsoofi, Jana Harper, Kameron Neal, and Paul Pinto+Erin Rogers. Working across media, artist’s projects explore how the shape and function of the mouth – as an opening, as a crevice, as a portal – can offer productive metaphors for the depths of heritage in the wake of imperialism, settler colonialism, and cultural erasure. 

Poetically imagining the openings in the ground, Gelsey Bell’s performative setting of Anne Boyer’s poem “What Resembles the Grave” is energetically animated by Erik Ruin in a video work that contends with the layered implications of a hole as a site of expansive critique. Extending the hole as an opening, Kameron Neal’s silent video work Makeout/Breakout frames a tongue-filled kiss smothering a glass surface to provide the viewer access to an overactive gesture of desire and opening. Navigating a different kind of opening, Mel Carter’s sculptural glass works are filled with what they term “liquid spells” derived from tinctures, teas, and blended herbal concoctions meant to heal the compounding effects of settler colonial violence. Neal’s spit moves from the flat glass into the mouths of Carter’s organic clear containers. Placed at the exteriors of glass and reflecting on the site of the bodega as a consumptive and connective space, Benedicto Figueroa’s LED signage flickers lines of poetry that recall stories of his parents from the grave while Paul Pinto+Erin Roger’s operatic video work recounts a theft at the tienda by “desperate youth” caught in a tension between bad behavior and as subjects of a bad environment. Surrounded by glass and fragile relationships, Figueroa and Pinto+Roger’s works illuminate the cavities that hold the tongue’s desire for taste and the stories these places tell. Alternatively, oscillating between the storefront and the domestic, Raheleh Filsoofi’s lit ceramic work Halal marks surfaces of consumption with the declaration of permission - one that signals a legacy of culture and practice through its textural materiality. Similarly working with markings and inscriptions, Jana Harper’s Memorial for Mackinac uses her written text to illuminate the names of familial descendants from the Mackinac Band of Chippewa and Ottawa Indians, in a gesture that accumulates history through the display of lineage and ancestry.

Aug 15-31, 2024

Opening reception:
Thu. Aug 15 @ 9:30pm-11:30pm

Brick Aux
628 Metropolitan Ave.
Brooklyn NY

​Brick Aux Gallery hours are 12-6PM on weekends, varied weekday hours, and by appointment: 
[email protected]

Artists:
Gelsey Bell
Mel Carter
Benedicto Figueroa Raheleh Filsoofi
Jana Harper
Kameron Neal
Paul Pinto
Erin Rogers
​Erik Ruin
​

In conjunction with: Natural Studies
a double-bill of new operas
Aug. 15-17 @ The Brick
[TICKETS]