Parks Exhibition Center and the Visual Arts department is pleased to present Re-purposing a Purpose: Art Space as Playground, featuring work by guest artists, Nooshin Hakim Javadi and Pedram Baldari, as well as installations by Idyllwild Arts students.
Nooshim and Pedram are Iranian artists currently practicing in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Their work has been included in exhibitions at major institutions and often implements performative elements using games to act as a conduit to engage and provide a space for exchanges. Over the course of a weeklong master class, Nooshin and Pedram worked with 20 students to produce insightful, interactive installations centered on critical issues of our time - social justice, immigration laws and climate change.
Re-purposing a Purpose is curated by visual arts faculty, Chris Groth and Jasmine Peck, and made possible thanks to generous support of an Arts Enterprise Laboratory (AEL) grant.
STATEMENT BY GUEST ARTISTS ABOUT THE SHOW Forms, Objects, Instructions, Games, Borders, these are the ways in which we find ourselves grounded to this world and all are arbitrary when placed in a different perspective. We like to play with these perspectives, deform forms, unveil the systems that give importance to objects or take importance away, reimage the instructions, flip the boards of games to see the other side, cross borders, disorient and reorient. Art for us is the best platform to ask questions and rethink the past and its connection to the present to understand the future. Our work rethinks a gallery to become an art space as a playground for questioning. Together we decided to use the capability the art to create a body of work that speaks to the audience through activation and reaction. With the help of Chris Groth and Jasmine Peck, we worked with students to create artworks that intertwine games with concepts that students connect with through reimagining the original function of the game. The three collaborative student projects you see are the result of three days and nights of their hard work. These artworks do not necessarily fit in the institutional norm of fine art but utilize the gallery as a platform for interaction and community activities.
