AlieNation
Artists
Lois Bielefeld & Nirmal Raja
Priya Ray
Edwin Salas
Kirsten Stolle
Alien
unfamiliar and disturbing or distasteful.
external to a thing, its essential nature, or its original character.
Latin: alienus ‘belonging to another’, from alius ‘other’. (Dictionary.com)
Nation
a territorial division containing a body of people of one or more nationalities and usually characterized by relatively large size and independent status. (Dictionary.com)
Alienation
a condition of workers in a capitalist economy, resulting from a lack of identity with the products of their labor and a sense of being controlled or exploited. (Marx, 1844)
“Even as politicians and the media have increasingly shifted away from the phrase “illegal immigrant” and toward “undocumented immigrant,” Trump over the past several months has taken a hard turn in the other direction. With increasing regularity, he is employing the phrase “illegal alien”(The Washington Post, January 2019)
Each artist in this exhibition disrupts the notion of a singular grand narrative reminding us that we are all aliens at one time or another, as our relationship to home, history, and our bodies change over time.
