Marginalia: Open Sessions 10

Marginalia: Open Sessions 10 declares our present geo-political and ideological constructs to be permeable and malleable. The artists in this exhibition view borders and barriers as materials through which to build new avenues of both trespass and solidarity. Marginalia features Daniel Bejar, Ana Peñalba, Sue Jeong Ka, Carolyn Lambert, Srinivas Mangipudi, Irini Miga, and Rodrigo Valenzuela.
Drawing is a mode of inquiry throughout the exhibition. Valenzuela visualises the American dream in deserted landscapes; Bejar traverses communities tenuously linked through political manoeuvring; Peñalba sketches visionary architecture from the waste of the present; Ka explores the aesthetics of deportation; Miga archives tender and almost unnoticeable gestures; Lambert finds legible marks deep in Arctic ice; and Mangipudi creates notebooks inviting strangers to add their marginalia.

Daniel Bejar’s Re-districting is a project that illuminates gerrymandered Congressional and State Senate districts through site-specific walks with a GPS device, tracking the artist’s walk and his body as a drawing instrument. Bejar traced the borders of New York Senate District 20 during a 12 hour and 32.04-mile journey, redrawing of New York State District 20 to reveal the absurdity of its shape.

Carolyn Lambert uses video and installation to address issues of place, territory, and the relationships that humans have with their environments. The Solastalgia Cycle, an ongoing body of work, takes climate change and extinction as a premise for considering the affective experience of living in the present.

Rodrigo Valenzuela constructs narratives, scenes, and stories that point to the tensions found between the individual and communities. In his work, autobiographical threads inform larger universal fields of experience. His work serves as an expressive and intimate point of contact between broader realms of subjectivity and political contingency.

Irini Miga is a visual artist based in New York City. Her installations investigate the fragmentary nature of memory and its relationship to actual objects in order to manipulate the understanding of our physical spaces. By combining sculpture with painterly qualities, her work points to shifting relationships between representation, abstraction, and materiality.

Srinivas Mangipudi uses drawing as a mechanism for cognitive learning and as a dialogue between thought and action, along with interdisciplinary mediums involving visualisation, sound, social interactions and computer programming.

Open Sessions

Open Sessions is a hybrid exhibition/residency programme created by Lisa Sigal and Nova Benway, Open Sessions Curators. It provides unique opportunities for selected artists to find new approaches for contextualising and exhibiting their work through exhibitions, public programmes, workshops, and working dinners. The artists selected for Open Sessions may or may not draw as their primary means of art-making. The two-year programme engages musicians, architects, dancers, poets—anyone who is interested in expanding the boundaries of drawing. Open Sessions artists work together to create a dynamic, continuous conversation, viewing drawing as an activity rather than a product.

About The Drawing Center

Drawing Center, a museum in Manhattan’s SoHo district, explores the medium of drawing as primary, dynamic, and relevant to contemporary culture, the future of art and creative thought. It is the only not-for-profit fine arts institution in the United States to focus solely on the exhibition of drawings, both historical and contemporary. It was established in 1977 to provide opportunities for emerging and under-recognised artists; to demonstrate the significance and diversity of drawings throughout history; and to stimulate public dialogue on issues of art and culture.