"Loaded" Opens in Chicago

"Loaded: Hunting Culture in America", curated by Audrey Michelle Mast and Ann Wiens, opened this week at the Glass Curtain Gallery, 1104 S. Wabash in Chicago. I have two videos in the exhibition, "The Roar" and "Hylophobia". From the press release:

In contemporary America, where people no longer need to hunt for survival, hunting culture – with its roots in notions of American independence, the frontier spirit, dominance over nature, and rugged individualism – has evolved to become an aesthetic and a lifestyle choice, a sport steeped in regional and family traditions. Many contemporary artists and designers have gravitated toward either the aesthetics or the cultural/social phenomena of hunting as the subject of their work, giving us objects, images, and spaces that range from kitsch to realism and hard-edged social commentary. This group exhibition, "Loaded: Hunting Culture in America," timed to coincide with the college-wide Critical Encounters initiative "Human|Nature," will take a deliberately ambivalent view toward the morality of hunting and address the subject as social, cultural, and artistic phenomenon, ideally nudging viewers to question their own preconceptions regarding hunting.

I'm excited to check out the show next month, when I'll be spending a week at Columbia University as part of the aforementioned Critical Encounters initiative. In April I'll be working with a class on a version of the coyote tracks project, doing a day of back-to-back presentations in Fereshteh Toosi's class about the Wilderness videos that are forever in-process, and doing a public lecture on some of my other work in the last year.

"Loaded" runs until April 29.