Handwerker Gallery, Ithaca College, New York
August 29 - October 13, 2024
all to pieces: elin slavick and susanne slavick
Ruffin Gallery, University of Virginia, Charlottesville VA
January 13 – February 14, 2020
Reception and gallery talk: Friday, January 31, 2020, 5-6pm
Image: Susanne Slavick, Cloud Real Estate II, 2016, Acrylic and oil on “color reform” carpet, 36 x 61 inches
"Liten" (Norwegian for small), organized by Laura Sharp Wilson, invites 23 artists from across the country to respond to the idea of human feelings of smallness and how that impacts the way we treat our planet and each other.
Bountiful Davis Art Center in Bountiful, Utah
September 27 - November 1, 2019
Ghost Ship, , 2017, archival digital print/Hahnemühle paper, 4 x 6 inches
Source: Giovanni di Paolo, St. Clare Rescuing the Shipwrecked, ca. 1455.
Andrew Ellis Johnson and Susanne Slavick
Schmucker Art Gallery at Gettysburg College
September 4 - December 6, 2019
Catalogue available with poems by David Hernandez, Maria Melendez Kelson, Blas Manuel De Luna, Dunya Mikhail, Prageeta Sharma, Warsan Shire, and Wisława Szymborska; an essay by Suketu Mehta; and texts by Vu Tran.
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Getting There is aspirational; it implies a destination, marking progress toward some kind of goal. Getting There is a burden, but also a dream of many migrants and refugees. We cannot speak for those in flight, in hiding, and in desperate hope. But we can speak to the contradictory fears and hypocrisies, ignored histories and punitive policies that we as a nation hold and enact here.
We are all from somewhere else. At some point in our family lineage, someone has crossed a border. Escape, expulsion, exile, exodus and emigration are integral to human history. Today, there are over 65 million refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people around the world, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. They are driven from their home by persecution, conflict and violence, or human rights violations.
Driven or displaced, cut loose or set adrift, or simply seeking safety—all are precarious states of passage. The decision to leave home may be voluntary or involuntary, arising from desperation or anticipation. Those of us not needing to flee live in comparative luxury. Yet many Americans choose to feel invaded, believing our jobs are threatened or our culture diluted or even contaminated.
There is real fear and fabricated fear. Both are fierce and ubiquitous. There is the natural fear of the unknown, shared by the vulnerable and those made to feel vulnerable. How are the vanquished so easily demonized into a formidable foe by the rhetoric of demagogues and the media that serves them? Why do alarmist claims of invasion and infestation persist despite the evidence, and despite the abusive history of such language? The “other” is imagined as larger than life—and worse, fueling the dangerous perception that “the thing that is lower than I, makes me bigger.”
Such assumptions and attitudes insist that is not enough to be strong; those perceived as weak and powerless must be punished with deportation, incarceration, and separation from those they love. They must be dehumanized and denied rights to asylum and autonomy. They must remain invisible. The works in Getting There question these manufactured imperatives and expose the consequences of our resentment or fear of “the stranger.”
The USA is a nation of immigrants and used to lead in resettling refugees. Today, with far fewer resources, Turkey and Pakistan now host the most refugees. Our current administration is slashing admissions to its lowest point in 40 years. Immigration policies have hardened, vilifying and incarcerating people who legally seek asylum. Outrage and soul-searching followed the separation of children from parents at the border, but the fury has failed to stop their indefinite detention in unprecedented numbers, against international law.
Being a refugee is not a choice. Those of us who are settled may never know the anxiety, risk or terror of those uprooted, the profound loss of what is left behind, and the daunting uncertainties ahead. Through these works, we explore encounters, intersections and perceptions between radically different worlds—between security and insecurity.
We are moved by images. We are moved by words. We are grateful to novelists, poets, anthropologists and journalists who have informed our projects and whose words we have included or cited. Among them are Jenny Erpenbeck, Lev Golinkin, Eliza Griswold, Mohsin Hamid, David Hernandez, Ali Johar, Maria Melendez Kelson, Jason De León, Blas Manuel De Luna, Suketu Mehta, Dunya Mikhail, Yasser Niksada, Prageeta Sharma, Warsan Shire, Wisława Szymborska, and Vu Tran.
Getting There suggests movement—but more than the literal movement of migrants and refugees. We hope Getting There advances an evolving ethos, a humane reception, an empathic embrace—and movement of our own consciences.
Center for Maine Contemporary Art
March 16 - June 16, 2019
RESORT and QUENCH are two recent collaborative video works by artists Andrew Ellis Johnson and Susanne Slavick that frame the global refugee and migration crisis through the lens of the sea.
A group show of manipulated found photographs
Curated by Olivia Huntley and elin o’Hara slavick
The Carrack / 947 E Main Street / Durham, NC / 27701
October 4-21, 2018
Opening Reception Friday, October 5, 7-9:30pm
Gallery Hours: Thursdays-Sundays 11am - 5pm and Wednesdays by appointment
With works by: Ben Alper, Andy Berner, Michael Barefield, Becky Brown, Allison Coleman, Diego Camposeco, Martha Carter, Joy Drury Cox, Meredith Emery, Jon Feinstein, Ashley Florence, Victor Foster, Adrian Garcia, Raymond Goodman, Beth Grabowski, Rachel Greene, Sharon Lee Hart, Brenda Miller Holmes, Peter Hoffman, Olivia Huntley, Michael Itkoff, Ellie Ivanova, Andrew Ellis Johnson, Ann Pegalow Kaplan, Siri Kaur, Michael Keaveney, Angela Kelly, Jasper Lee, Susan Alta Martin, Cathy McLaurin, Lindsay Metivier, Joy Meyer, Deepanjan Mukhopadhyay, Susan Mullally, Annika Nordenskiold, Ashely Oates, Lesley Patterson-Marx, Kelly Popoff, Samprati Prasad, Bill Santen, Leslie Sheryll, Annie Simpson, elin o’Hara slavick, Susanne Slavick, Leah Sobsey, Cindy Steiler, Liz Steketee, Bill Thelen, Hong-An Truong, Amy White, Laura Sharp Wilson
Workshop / Panel
October 7, Sunday, 2-4pm with Michael Keaveney – Transforming the Photographic
October 21, Sunday, 2-4pm
Panel discussion / gallery talk with curators Olivia Huntley and elin o’Hara slavick and local artists in the exhibition, including Ben Alper, Deepan Mukhopadhyay and Ann Pegalow Kaplan
Desire has no history. – Susan Sontag
Anti-Nostalgia is a group exhibition of artists invited to create works utilizing found photographs. Artists explore: our relationship to the photograph as an object; memories and sentimentality; history and the familial; the vernacular and the archive; and alternative and interventionist narratives. A photograph provides both a historical and unattainable reality. Anti-Nostalgia investigates how our attraction to and/or repulsion by found photographs does not come from nostalgia, but comes from a desire to confirm, deny and transform a reality. Theorists argue that nostalgia can be a form of fascism - a longing for a glorified past that leads us down an authoritarian path. Anti-Nostalgia is a topical and critical approach to our current global situation, an attempt to draw attention to the way we read, feel, understand and use imagery in the name of ideology and personal whim.
The McDonough Museum of Art at Youngstown State University
September 7 – October 26, 2018
Public Reception, Friday, September 7, 5-7pm
Gallery Talk, Friday, September 7, 5 pm
New Immigrant and Refugee Visions screening, 6-7pm
The John J. McDonough Museum of Art, on the campus of Youngstown State University opens the fall season with RESORT, a traveling exhibition of works by Andrew Ellis Johnson and Susanne Slavick. It accompanies Sanctuary, an exhibition of paintings by John Guy Petruzzi. Both shows will be on view in the galleries September 7 – October 26 with an opening reception on Friday, September 7 from 5-7pm. Susanne Slavick and Andrew Ellis Johnson will give a gallery talk on the evening of the reception beginning at 5pm.
In addressing RESORT Slavick and Johnson comment: “Driven or displaced, cut loose or set adrift, or simply seeking safety—all are precarious states of passage. The decision to leave home may be voluntary or involuntary, arising from desperation or anticipation. RESORT, as a title, reflects that duality. To flee is a last resort. The destination is often another shore, literally or figuratively. The shore can also be a place for a benign kind of escape—an actual vacation resort. Some European vacationers have actually watched refugees wash ashore, from vessels both intact and capsized. We have similar scenarios on land at our own borders, worsened by recent separations of children from their families. RESORT explores the intersection of these two worlds—of security and insecurity— and our responses to those caught between them.”
In conjunction with RESORT, there will be several screenings from New Immigrant and Refugee Visions, produced by Community Supported Film. A preview screening will take place on Friday, September 7, 6-7pm. Additional screenings will take place from 12:30 to 1:30pm on September 11,14, 25, 28 and October 9, 12, 23 and 26. New Immigrant and Refugee Visions is a collection of documentary films made by new immigrants that provide unique insider perspectives on both the challenges of integration and the contributions immigrants make to our culture, economy and social fabric.
McDonough galleries are open Tuesday through Saturday from 11am until 4pm.
Office hours are Monday through Friday from 8am to 5pm.
The Museum is open to the public and admission is free.
RESORT, a video co-created with Andrew Ellis Johnson, is included in:
New Mexico State University Art Gallery
March 12, 2018 from 10am-6pm
A second screening event occurs on April 16, 2018 from 6pm-8:30pm at the CMI Theater Milton Hall 171 on the campus of NMSU. Sponsored by the Gender & Sexuality Studies, Interdisciplinary Studies Department, and the Creative Media Institute.
RESORT, a two person show by Andrew Ellis Johnson and Susanne Slavick at The Fed Galleries at Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, Michigan, previewed in this REVUE article by Marla Miller.
