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Title: Carlos Rosales-Silva: Art Truck
Description: The Art Truck brings exciting and accessible contemporary art created by leading local and national artists directly to schools and community venues along the Wasatch Front. Engage in learning about our current Art Truck installation by Carlos Rosales-Silva, a contemporary artist from Austin, Texas whose paintings photos, sculptures and drawings investigate themes of borders, diversity and identity. Growing up in various parts of Texas, artist Carlos Rosales-Silva had to reconcile his own identity — half Mexican, half American Indian — with that of his larger-than-life state. "Texas history is all about mythmaking" said Rosales-Silva, 30, who's in Utah this month with an art exhibit on wheels in the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art's Art Truck. Rosales-Silva, who is now living in New York but will forever associate himself with Texas, aims to examine identity issues of race and class and "filter them through formal art movements." He lists as examples Op Art (think Bauhaus) and Abstract Expressionism (Mark Rothko and others), as well as popular culture iconography. Take, for example, his "Texas Comanches" banner. It's a large red-and-white banner like one you would see in any high-school gymnasium. But this one reads, "Texas Comanches, State Champions, 1747-1865" the dates indicating how long the Comanches roamed Texas before white settlers ultimately defeated the native population. "A lot of my things have a sense of humor" Rosales-Silva said. "It's laughing to keep from crying. If you can make people laugh, you can get their attention." The Art Truck will be easy to identify as it drives around Salt Lake City: It will be wrapped in a 7-foot-high vinyl version of Rosales-Silva's diptych "Bringing Sexy Back." Exhibition held in the Art Truck.
Subjects: Abstract works, Ethnic stereotypes, Boundaries, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA), Project 337, UMOCA Art Truck, identity, ethnicity, diversity, Idols, contemporary
Local Identifier: 14-0178

Title: Out of the Closet: Clothing as Imagery in Contemporary Art
Description: This exhibition includes the work of sixteen artists who use the visual language of clothing and dress as a vehicle to explore deeper layers of human behavior and relationships. That clothing is the chosen theme for this exhibition follows obvious connections between clothing and art. Clothing is often considered art, in and of itself. Like art, clothing communicates ideas on a visual level. Both clothing and art employ symbolism to infer abstract concepts. And trends in clothing and art are influenced by similar external factors. An examination of either one requires a consideration of the social, cultural and political climates in which they exist. In this exhibition clothing is employed as metaphor, articles of dress are used for inherent symbolic meaning, and garments are represented in unexpected context. Exhibition held in the Main Gallery space.
Subjects: Clothing & dress, Sex, genders, gender issues, identity, sexuality, mixed media, Salt Lake Art Center, Body image
Local Identifier: 14-0453

Title: Inside Out: Identity, Gender and Society
Description: A free public symposium in conjunction with the exhibition "Out of The Closet: Clothing as Imagery in Contemporary Art."
Subjects: Meetings, Sex, Clothing & dress, imagery, identity, gender issues, Salt Lake Art Center
Local Identifier: 14-0447

Title: Girl Ascending: Melissa Ann Pinney
Description: Girl Ascending began with a photograph of a girl seemingly suspended in mid-air, holding onto a chain-link fence with one hand, her dress lifted by the breeze. The setting is commonplace: a baseball game, nondescript buildings, and a dirt field seen though the fence. Nevertheless, the improbable levitation and serene demeanor of the girl suggested the Ascension of the Blessed Virgin Mary to the artist, raised, as she was, on the symbolic imagery of Catholicism. Grounded in attentive observation of the world, Chicago-based photographer, Melissa Ann Pinney reveals how dreams and expectations of girlhood are constructed and communicated between mothers and daughters, society and friends. She intimately portrays her daughter, Emma, growing up and becoming an adolescent, providing fresh insights into her day to day life with family, friends and neighbors. One of eight children from a large, Catholic family, the artist has always been drawn to scenes of family that also express her interest in ritual, mystery and memory. While her photographs capture seemingly insignificant moments from a girl’s daily world, they signify mythic and heroic themes of the vital transformation that takes place when a girl enters into womanhood. Exhibition held in the Street Gallery space.
Subjects: Artists' devices, Religious articles, Mothers & children, Salt Lake Art Center, iconography, identity, religion, Symbols, photography
Local Identifier: 14-0161

Title: Go West: Promised Land or Exile? - Exhibition Views
Description: Go West brings together twenty contemporary artists who offer up critical reflections on the West as both destination and destiny. These artists engage in an excavation of myths and ideologies embedded in the West, uncovering a range of motivations for westward movement over the years. For so many Americans, the West was thought to be, first and foremost, a place without a past. Go West suggests the ways in which the past always informs the present, and how the West as place of latent possibilities continues to figure in our cultural imagination. Exhibition held in the Main Gallery space.
Subjects: cultural movements and attitudes, Westward movement, Utopias, Collective settlements, Exiles, Salt Lake Art Center, identity, cultural heritage
Local Identifier: 14-0162

Title: Christopher Kelly: God Complex
Description: Christopher Kelly's "God Complex" expands and encapsulates this particular creationist motif by referencing the language and aesthetics of science fiction. A genre often associated with futuristic pursuits of new worlds and extraterrestrial life, sci-fi is also an apt metaphor for the discovery of differences between self and other, human and alien. Although Kelly's practice is averse to explicit narrative, one cannot help but attempt to place each work into a greater story. His performative sculptures are poetic simulations that confront the perplexities of identity. By constructing allegorical depictions of personal dialogues, Kelly forms an internal autobiography. Exhibition held in the Projects Gallery space.
Subjects: performance artists, sculpture, identity, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art (UMOCA), pamphlets, narrative, Science fiction
Local Identifier: 14-0330

Title: Doublespeak
Description: Doublespeak features artworks by an international roster of contemporary women artists who utilize strategies of layered or multiple meanings to address politically, sexually or socially difficult subject matter. This exhibition will examine feminine perspectives on politics, war and gender, including exploration of the role of women as authors, victims, bystanders, soldiers, commentators, and caretakers. Each of the artists in Doublespeak comes from a perspective of dual-identity in one way or another (in terms of culture, religion, sexual identity, etc.). The exhibition draws its initial inspiration from the work of female Vietnamese poet Hô Xuân Hu’o’ng, a pioneer more than 200 years ago in the use of literary double-entendres that engaged philosophical quandaries of life and death as well as daily conflicts between men and women. Writing in Vietnamese, Hô ultilized the tonal nature of the language to create poems that had one meaning when read with a given tonality, and an entirely different, discreet meaning when read with the alternate tonality or pronunciation. There is a long history of women using codes to get their message across – from the centuries-old language Nüshu, used by Chinese women in the Hunan province, to the secret quilt codes of the Underground Railroad during the American Civil War. This exhibition offers contemporary examples of such cultural codes. Exhibition held in the Main Gallery Space.
Subjects: Cultural relations, Political issues, Sexism, identity, codes, Salt Lake Art Center
Local Identifier: 14-0169

Title: Battleground States
Description: Battleground States brings together artists who critically engage with the discourse of visual culture and gender studies. Through video, sculpture, installation, and photography, these works explore ideas of how figuration and identity are connected. The exhibition begins with Utah artist Trevor Southey as his process of self-realization has made him an art historical pivot when discussing gender politics within the culture of Utah. The narrative continues by presenting generations of artists across the globe, leading the viewer along a path of self-realization in which concepts of coupling or completing the self are represented as spiritual quests. Battleground States analyzes the space between traditional gender duality by exploring alternative forms such as the third gender, a generally foreign concept in Western culture. In their non-Western roles, these alternative identities denote a space for possibility and transcendence. The exhibition moves towards notions of the “post-gender” as a way to better understand how our cultural diversities open up interpretations of a third space. Exhibition held in the Main Gallery space.
Subjects: Politics & government, Salt Lake Art Center, gender issues, dualism, identity, narratives, viewers
Local Identifier: 14-0123

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