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Multiple Artists

Roadside Attraction: Challenging Reality Now @SMoCA 

May 1 - May 31, 2024

ArtFarm Phoenix is an artist collective with the goals of creating exhibition opportunities for artists and supporting initiatives that make art accessible to everyone.

About

About

ArtFarm Phoenix is an artist collective with the goals of creating exhibition opportunities for artists and supporting initiatives that make art accessible to everyone. ArtFarm is focused on providing an opportunity for artists representing different viewpoints and diverse voices. Roadside Attraction encourages artists to think about creative ways to bring art directly to the public. 

About the Featured Work

Christopher Jagmin 

BEFORE, 2024 

A meaningful apology can be powerful. One can offer comfort, show respect, and solidify a level of trust between two people. But we live in a time when celebrities offer Twitter-apologies. Their insincere tweets are often deceptive or shady in order to make headlines and offend. A once, healing gesture now can be used as a hurtful social media trolling weapon. 

Power-less, 2024 

Looking at this alphabet-coded print may be confusing for a moment but is actually simple if you understand the key.  

Faced with challenges, misunderstandings, and frustrations, disenfranchised communities may not understand that they have strength against powerful forces if they only were let in on the secret. 

Janet Goleas 

Gypsy Moon Goddess, 2024

This sculpture is part of the Gypsy Moon series, which resulted from decades of star gazing by the artist. After witnessing the 2017 total eclipse, Janet Goleas’s imagery began to revolve around globes, circles, cropped circles, star clusters, and galaxies. Gypsy Moon Goddess is a celebration of transition and the healing properties of color, as well as adaptability, buoyancy, and aspiration.  

Kris Manzanares 

Gathering Light, 2020 

The lanterns are made of clothing and textiles collected from the surrounding community. From afar they appear as bright designs, but when viewed closely, one can see details of what they were before they became lanterns. Stripes sharpen into shirtsleeves, moo-moos morph into paisleys, and spirals sport cuffs and collars. We are reminded of the people who once used or wore these items, and this suggestion of intimacy has the power to make us curious about our unknown neighbors. 

Rembrandt Quiballo 

People Power, 2023 

The People Power Movement was a series of popular uprisings in the Philippines that ended Ferdinand Marcos’s decades-long dictatorship and prompted Rembrandt Quiballo’s family to immigrate to the United States, due to social and political unrest. These events deeply impacted the artist and have been influential in his work to this day. The Black Lives Matter movement during the pandemic served as a flashpoint. More recently, Quiballo collaborated with an artist from Iran and found similarities in their experiences. Despite coming from different countries, they both have experienced firsthand the social and political upheaval that has marked their respective societies. It is through this work that Quiballo seeks to explore the complex and often tumultuous nature of these experiences. 

In the center, Quiballo utilizes found footage of protests from the Philippines. He employs generative AI to craft the outer frames using Black Lives Matter on the left and the Green Movement on the right as prompts. Quiballo hopes to show that revolution is a universal entity, one that is shaped by the unique historical and cultural contexts of each society but ultimately speaks to the fundamental human desire for freedom, justice, and equality. 

 

 

 

Related Event

Roadside Attraction Performance + Video Night
On view May 23, 2024, 7 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

Join SMoCA for an unforgettable evening of performances and video screenings with Roadside Attraction: Challenging Reality Now. This one-night-only event brings together an array of artists and performers to showcase their work.

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