the stories we tell each other: versia harris
July 1-31, 2021
re.riddle is pleased to present The Stories We Tell Each Other a solo exhibition of new work by Versia Harris, from July 1-31. This exhibition is the part of re.flect, a program series that spotlights one of the gallery's artists each month. The rotating monthly series will offer in-depth access into the respective processes and practices of our global community of artists. In addition, the artists have partnered with re.riddle to release limited edition, unique works at special prices. These exclusive pieces will only be available during the month of the related exhibition.
Curatorial Statement
The Stories We Tell Each Other, an exhibition of new work by Versia Harris, sets out to reveal the psychology of narrative in society and culture, specifically how it manifests in our personal, domestic lives via desire, ideals and imagination. For centuries, narratives have operated as a basic human strategy for coming to terms with fundamental elements of our experience, making sense of our past and navigating our present. This exhibition considers the storied nature of human behavior and the ways in which our identities take shape by telling stories and listening to the stories of others.
How might narratives thicken or give structure to our experiences, thoughts and fantasies? What are the collective narratives about who we are and how we live? What are the ways in which social norms and political ideologies concur with visual culture in the aestheticization of narratives?
The narrative of fantasies is a recurrent motif in Harris’s work. Through the creation of fiction – characters and imagined landscapes - Harris touches on reality, how an identity is formed, and the desire to align it with idealized fantasies. Some of these fantasies are benign; Harris recalls her younger self mesmerized with the utopia of Disney movies and attempting to swim in the ocean as if she had a fin instead of legs. Others, more dark and consequential, uncover how fantasy, as personal and political, has had its hand in segregation, racism, homophobia and sexism. Another example reflects on the evolving reality of the “American Dream,” a fading economic possibility of upward-mobility that has simultaneously mutated into a consumerist aspiration for recognizable status. Her installations, films and illustrations interrogate these fantasies and their ramifications; it is a regaining of power in a world where she feels powerless to the gravitational pull of collective narratives.
Harris addresses these ideas through the creation of characters that act as symbolic references to various ways fantasy can play out. In her installation, The Difficulty, Harris utilizes domestic items, decorations and toys, objects we are familiar sharing space with, to shape tableaus that model a conversation between the persuaded, influenced individual and the more powerful establishments and systems. Her slower-paced animations (Home 1, 2, and The Consuming) provide a less bodily experience, but force the viewer to observe the process of imagining a fantasy almost in real-time, as a banal, quotidian happening. Harris’s mirroring of the fantasy and banality of narrative exposes and demonstrates the ever-present conflict between who we are, who we are told to be and who we want to be. If they are core to the human condition, then a certain awareness of that becomes essential. After all, we are shaped by our shaping of the world, and are shaped again in turn.
Programming
Presented alongside the exhibition will be programming about Versia Harris’s creative process and practice.
Thursday, July 22 at 5:30pm PST/ 7:30pm CST/ 8:30pm EST:
Weaving Stories: A Workshop with Contemporary Artists Versia Harris x Lorena Cruz.
Guests are invited to participate and engage with artists Versia Harris (Barbados) and Lorena Cruz (USA) and their respective weaving practices. In addition to learning about the history and culture of weaving, participants will be weaving alongside the artists and exchanging their personal and collective stories. Upon registration, participants will receive a list of suggested materials to bring and questions to respond to during the workshop. Stories may be real or fictional.
Barbadian artist Versia Harris examines the human condition and the psychology of politics as it relates to desire, ideals and imagination. Harris has done a number of residences in the Caribbean and North and South America and has exhibited in various countries, including London, China, Nigeria, Moscow, Aruba, and the USA. She was awarded a Fulbright Laspau Scholarship in 2017 and received her MFA at Cranbrook Academy of Art, Michigan USA in 2019, where she also earned a Mercedes-Benz Financial Services New Beginnings Award. Her most recent exhibitions include PRIZM 2020, Ars Electronica 2020 and “Becoming” at Saint Joseph’s Art Society, 2021 both with re.riddle. Harris also teaches in her home country at the Barbados Community College.
Lorena Cruz Santiago is a Mexican-American artist from Northern California currently based in Detroit, Michigan. She received her BFA in Photography from Sonoma State University in 2016 and her MFA in Photography from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 2019. Cruz Santiago has attended residencies like ACRE (Steuben, WI), Tesselate (Pontiac, MI), and most recently Pocoapoco Residency in Oaxaca City, Oaxaca, MX. Her work has been included in shows at El Comalito Collective (Vallejo, CA), Urban Institute for Contemporary Arts (Grand Rapids, MI), Cranbrook Art Museum (Bloomfield Hills, MI), and in ArtMile Detroit 2020. Through an interdisciplinary practice that includes photography, video, and printmaking her work illustrates post-colonial themes of migration and assimilation.
Artworks
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