High Beams #4: . . . - - - . . . (SOS)

The Level Ground Collective was invited to participate in High Beams #4: SPF 405. Curated by Level Ground Collective artist Labkhand Olfatmanesh, our installation featured work from: Ruoyi Shi, Chantal Cherry, Casey Brown, Jireh Deng, Chiho Harazaki, Shima Taj Bakhsh, and Rebekah Neel. The show took place on July 17, 2021 at the Torrance Art Museum.

Curator Statement: How exactly does one emerge from isolation into a social atmosphere? We have communal and intimate experiences of separation and loss that we are just now starting to navigate. Using separate and shared spaces, with walls closing in, we are collectively offering new work that has been born out of the past year’s impact on our artistic lives. These pieces showcase individual artists’ ongoing responses to the connecting experience of isolation and re-entry. From the art-of-everyday-conversation lessons Ruoyi Shi has to teach the feisty green parrot to the warmth and safety of Chiho Harazaki’s tenuous cocoon, we are delighted to participate in this thematic exploration of safety and community.

Cocoon

by Chiho Harazaki

After the outbreak of coronavirus, I felt trapped by feelings of anxiety, powerlessness, fear, sadness, and depression, as well as anger. Eventually, I started taking life one day at a time, focusing on what I could do each day. For my art, I use adhesive tape as my primary medium. Tape may indicate binding/connecting us to each other, or sealing oneself inside, separated from reality. I found a comfortable and secure place at home during the pandemic where no one could hurt me. Isn't it possible to stay in the cocoon forever?

Playground

by Shima Taj Bakhsh

Playground, portrays characters inspired by the shape of my childhood dolls. Images of myself as a child are reconstructed to embody their childlike souls but take on new lives through size and manipulated movement. This technique triggers, unconsciously, several concepts such as anonymity, deformity, and metamorphosis from the state of being a human to the state of being a doll and vice versa while criticizing the passive consumer of images.

Foreign/Familiar

by Rebekah Neel

Between 1987 and 1993 my mother and grandmother wrote each other more than 1,000 letters. My mother lived in the sprawling city of Shanghai, China, and my grandmother lived in the tiny rural town of New Freedom, Pennsylvania. They saw each other in person only a handful of times over those six years and their phone calls were infrequent. These handwritten letters, which often took weeks to reach one another, were their primary way to stay in touch. They are all at once foreign and familiar. Foreign communication methods with familiar handwriting. Foreign social dynamics existing in familiar cycles of history. Foreign versions of familiar people. I came across these letters during the pandemic at a time when I was experiencing similar patterns of isolation as the primary caregiver for a young child. Reading through these communications has spurred me into the practice of undoing patterns and sewing new forms into existence.

One Art

by Jireh Deng

This is an interactive installation between the artist and the community members who visit. Each person visiting will receive a custom typed poem with the option to also physically document the moment by having their photo taken with a polaroid. In exchange for the poem, that person will leave a handwritten note hung on clothes wire. The goal is to fill the entire space with notes from individuals with anonymous and signed confessions, hopes, and dreams, akin to a wishing tree. The installation represents the cacophony of voices and expectations that can sometimes crowd our thoughts and emotions. Where do our beliefs come from? My theory is that everything is recycled, nothing is new under the sun, including the recycled paper being used to type poems. 

Monday Mournings

by Chantal Cherry and Casey Brown

This duet is about strange bedfellows: the catastrophic and the pedestrian, simplicity and complexity, Monday mornings and mundane mournings. As longtime collaborators Chantal Cherry and Casey Brown share space and touch for the first time since isolation, their disparate movement practices inscribe the memories and rituals from the year they spent apart. Utilizing objects (and each other) as both tools and obstructions, their movement navigates the new fragility of togetherness and queer touch. We hope this duet will be a ritual in collective healing for ourselves as well as for viewers.

The Art of Everyday Conversation

by Ruoyi Shi

I started to discipline the green parrots outside my window during the quarantine. As we know, they are famous for their deafening noise and rebellion stories. By performing as an Etiquette instructor, chasing the parrots and forcing them to follow specific orders, I aim to question the use of human regulations on nature, and historically, how obedience was formed and routinized in our society.