Group Exhibition: “Utopia/Dystopia” at UICA

January 1, 2013

Utopia/Dystopia

Urban Institute of Contemporary Arts, Grand Rapids
December 21–February 17
Curated by: Brett Colley and Mandy Cano-Villalobos.

I was invited to produce an installation for UICA’s “Utopia/Dystopia” exhibition planned to coincide with the end of the world predicted by the Mayan calendar. “Interior of a Detroit Home (2012)” was produced and displayed as part of this curated exhibition and included digitally manipulated wallpaper, hand-painted ceramic and melamine plates and found souvenir objects and aimed to address post-war suburban flight and the post-war consumerism boom that ushered in a taste for cheaply made, mass-produced and aesthetically unremarkable goods and how this shift related to the decline of Detroit’s rich urban neighborhoods.

Curatorial statement: Our society operates under a continual sense of fear. Threats of tsunamis, earthquakes, tribal warfare and violent extremism circulate through mass produced imagery and perpetuate a cultural landscape racked with apprehension. As the Mayan calendar predicts the end of a current era on December 21, the globe reacts; mass media promotes yet another fantastic apocalyptic scenario, Bolivia pledges to outlaw Coke, and art institutes throw End of the World parties. This exhibition imagines our future geo-political landscape-with optimism and utopian hope or cynicism and dystopian fear.

Hear an introduction of the exhibit from the curators: