House Arrest
Performance Art Exhibition and Artist Residency
June 5- August 29, 2021
Sindy Butz, Emilio Rojas, Donna Kukama
Curated by Lital Dotan
Open Saturdays & Sundays 1-5p and by appointment
Admission is free, reservations required
Glasshouse in New Paltz is pleased to present ‘House Arrest’- a house-wide performance art installation and a series of performance exhibitions by artists in residence Sindy Butz, Emilio Rojas and Donna Kukama.
Glasshouse, an art space dedicated exclusively to performance art in the domestic sphere since 2007 relocated to New Paltz from Brooklyn into a circa 1798 former inn turned farmhouse on the historic Springtown Rd.
House Arrest The term ‘House Arrest’, which serves as the theme for Glasshouse's opening season, generally refers to a legal measure confining a person to their residence. Most recently domestic confinement became a symbol of our time, yet the motivation behind the theme of ‘House Arrest’ is to embody the historic role of the home in the evolution of the archive (‘arkheion’ in greek was initially the archiver’s residence)- in the context of performance art. Through the series of exhibitions and events ‘House Arrest’ explores various approaches to the performativity of the domestic archive, it’s fluidity in showcasing what is intentionally archived and how life interferes and intertwines with the archive and its keepers. The artists in residence, their work displayed, the audience watching and keeping record are all part of that performative "arrest”.
Exhibition Shed- Traditionally, sheds are external structures used as places of storage. The shed at Glasshouse is a rustic mid-century structure which we gently renovated to serve as a dedicated exhibition space, untethered by the domesticity of the project at large. The 3 months long ‘House Arrest’ exhibition will present solo exhibitions by Glasshouse’s artists in residence.
Artist in Residence Program- Glasshouse’s Artists in Residence in 2021 are:
Sindy Butz
Artist In Residence June 2021
Sindy Butz is a German-born interdisciplinary visual artist, Butoh dancer, and somatic movement educator living and working in New York City. She creates conceptual endurance performances, performance-based video art and photography, multisensory sculptural installations, and olfactoric scent projects. She executes her work with a passion for the research on the human body, slow-time perception, and hyper-controlled micro-movement.In her project-based works, she explores belief systems and ideologies throughout history, socio-political transformation processes, collective memory, the human unconscious, behavior, human sensing, and the notion of time.
Butz will use her residency at Glasshouse to develop a new sensory installation and performance series "Alchemy, Ceremony, and Coffee" which is based on her previous social sculpture and scent-based performances with coffee.
Emilio Rojas
Artist In Residence July 2021
Emilio Rojas is a multidisciplinary artist working primarily with the body in performance, using video, photography, installation, public interventions and sculpture. He holds an MFA in Performance from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA in Film from Emily Carr University in Vancouver, Canada. As a queer latinx immigrant with indigenous heritage, it is essential to his practice to engage in the postcolonial ethical imperative to uncover, investigate, and make visible and audible undervalued or disparaged sites of knowledge, narratives, and individuals. He utilizes his body in a political and critical way, as an instrument to unearth removed traumas, embodied forms of decolonization, migration and poetics of space. His research based practice is heavily influenced by queer and feminist archives, border politics, botanical colonialism, and defaced monuments. Besides his artistic practice, he is also a translator, community activist, yoga teacher, and anti-oppression facilitator with queer, migrant and refugee youth.
Donna Kukama
Artist In Residence August 2021
Donna Kukama is a transdisciplinary artist and creative researcher whose practice presents institutions, books, monuments, gestures of protest, and economies that are as real as they are fictitious. Her practice takes on an experimental form, shifting between performance, video, text, sound, and multimedia installations, with the aim to subvert how histories and value systems are constructed.
Kukama has exhibited and presented performances at several notable institutions and museums, including the Nottingham Contemporary in Nottingham, Kunsthal KaDe in Amersfoort, Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea Milano in Milan, South African National Gallery in Cape Town, Museum of Modern Art in Antwerp, Tate Modern in London, nGbK in Berlin, and the New Museum in New York. She has participated in the 57th Belgrade Biennale; 12th Lyon Biennale; the 6th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art; 32nd Bienal de São Paulo; 8th Berlin Biennale (as CHR); the 10th Berlin Biennale‘s public programme, as well as the South African Pavilion at the 55th Venice Biennale. She is the 2014 recipient of the Standard Bank Young Artist Award for Performance Art and was a nominee for the MTN New Contemporaries Award (2010) and the Visible Award (as NON-NON Collective), 2011.