Exhibitions
Anna Brody (Tucson, Az) "Lown" 2022
Coveted III: Histories
February 10 - April 9, 2023
Opening reception: February 10, 6 - 9 pm
Kaiser Gallery presents Coveted III: Histories a powerful exploration of self through an innovative lens. Using new media such as interactive installations, AI technology, photography, video, and performance art, the exhibition delves into themes of gender, race, and culture in a way that is both inspiring and revolutionary. Through this bold exhibit, viewers are challenged to reflect on preconceived notions of identity while also being exposed to fresh perspectives on how members of society can be represented. Coveted III: Histories thus provides an invaluable window into the ways in which individuals may express themselves differently in our rapidly changing world.
Presenting the works of Anna Brody, Glenda Drew, Cameron Gorman, Seth LeDonne, Gina Washington, Alexa Wehrman, and Jun Zhang.
February 10 - April 9, 2023
Opening reception: February 10, 6 - 9 pm
Kaiser Gallery presents Coveted III: Histories a powerful exploration of self through an innovative lens. Using new media such as interactive installations, AI technology, photography, video, and performance art, the exhibition delves into themes of gender, race, and culture in a way that is both inspiring and revolutionary. Through this bold exhibit, viewers are challenged to reflect on preconceived notions of identity while also being exposed to fresh perspectives on how members of society can be represented. Coveted III: Histories thus provides an invaluable window into the ways in which individuals may express themselves differently in our rapidly changing world.
Presenting the works of Anna Brody, Glenda Drew, Cameron Gorman, Seth LeDonne, Gina Washington, Alexa Wehrman, and Jun Zhang.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Anna Brody
Anna Brody (she/they) is an artist and educator currently based out of Tucson, Arizona and some other places. She works with video, performance, and photography to describe and explore the non-linear, non-binary world of simultaneous connection and lateral growth. Their video installations and interactive performances express a lifetime preoccupation with the layering of romantic, familial, and platonic love relationships in our lives, and the mutual labor and trust required for them to thrive. As a queer and non-binary artist and educator, they hope only to shift decisively away from the transactional, and towards the transformational. Anna graduated magna cum laude with a B.F.A. from the Savannah College of Art and Design, and received her M.F.A. in Photo, Video, & Imaging from the University of Arizona in May 2021. Their work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Yale MFA Thesis exhibition and a screening at Librería Casa Bosques in Mexico City in 2021.
Artist Statement
My work addresses love relationships of all intersecting kinds, and the internalized values that mediate them through video installation, performance, photography, and audioscape. I seek to dissolve the barrier between knowing something and feeling it, and I’m curious as to how aligning actions with words might begin to repair the disconnect often found there, and build trust in my own queer emotional future and the resilience of our collective heart. From this perspective, I undergo embodied inquiries of endurance, risk, and trust, often engaging repetition in its capacity to create both comfort and tedium. In both performance and video I deal explicitly with the physical labor involved in communicating through mutual cooperation and negotiative compromise. Themes of interdependence, attachment, and devotion are explored alongside questions of self-determination and autonomy of identity. The actions undertaken in my performances are also simple, often referencing adolescence. What we learn as children about love in all of its iterations is usually unconsciously absorbed, and I am curious as to whether the deliberate nature of the gestures might countermand the unhelpful lessons of childhood media and social influence, and reinforce the more positive ones by creating new muscle memories in our hearts.
My creative practice centers around becoming more comfortable with the fact that everything beyond the self is a variable requiring faith and acceptance, a relinquishing of control. Behind all of my work is a fundamentally connective nature, and an understanding that the drive to try anyway–to attempt to grow and hope and thrive together in community– in the face of so many unknowns and so little control is our species’ collective insanity and communal tenderness, and the only thing lighting our way into an uncertain future.
Glenda Drew
My creative work is based at the intersections of visual culture and social change, with a particular emphasis on the working class. My subjects include country musicians, waitresses, feminists and precarious workers. My practice is multifaceted in form and includes film/video, motion graphics, photography, graphics, interactivity and community participation. I was an active member of Paper Tiger Television in San Francisco for several years, a defining experience that continues to anchor and shape my work, from the DIY aesthetic and approach aimed at unpacking media technologies, to creating accessible work that asks critical questions. I exhibit my work nationally and internationally. My work has been featured in Leonardo, Bitch! and The Washington Post. I am currently a Professor of Design specializing in digital media at UC Davis.
(Non)linear Light.
My daughter was born on December 19, 2003. He became my son sometime in 2022. I can’t say the exact day. But the government agreed on December 12. There was an inner war. It was not my war. But I watched it from the distance of my body. Helpless. There was an outer war. It was part my war — the cuts, the burns, the terror. There is a transformation now, inner, outer and more cuts, this time by a doctor. The throughline is his eyes. The iris scanner knows; it is free of gender bias. The use of a “linear light” blending mode between portraits of the past and present reveal a nonlinear light through an algorithm of alteration.
(Non)linear Light is printed on silver metallic paper that reflects inner light.
--> max
My daughter was born on December 19, 2003. He became my son sometime in 2022. I can’t say the exact day. But the government agreed on December 12. There was an inner war. It was not my war. But I watched it from the distance of my body. Helpless. There was an outer war. It was part my war — the cuts, the burns, the terror. There is a transformation now, inner, outer and more cuts, this time by a doctor. I strain to see through to his past. This interactive piece uses portraits, blending modes, time-based media and augmented reality (AR) to visualize a tumultuous journey.
The AR is achieved through the download and use of the free Artivive app. You can preview the video that is shown through the app on this Vimeo link: https://vimeo.com/781976697
Cameron Gorman
Cameron Gorman is a writer, painter, and journalist based in Ohio. Cameron holds an M.F.A. From The Ohio State University and a B.S. in Journalism from Kent State.
Artist Statement
Cameron Gorman is a nonbinary, afab artist who works in the fields of poetry, nonfiction, video art, and painting. These found footage videos challenge the norms of media ownership in order to critique ownership of the body. In ‘Generation Loss,’ the viewer is confronted with the commodification of alternative gender expressionism through 90s media, including shock talk shows. In ‘History Lesson,’ which contains poetry performances, the history of the blending of gender and sexuality is explored through a digital interface. “Have I Told You I Loved You?” Explores gendered affection in the age of robotics.
Seth LeDonne
Seth LeDonne creates work that highlights the novelty and profoundness of everyday life. Their recent bodies of work examine masculinity, reliance on technology, humankind’s relationship with the natural world, apocalyptic poetry, and mental wellness. Central to LeDonne’s work is providing the viewer with a point of relatability through warmth or humor. Their work advocates for the usefulness of reflection and self-expression as self-care tools.
Seth is inspired by the urgency of water-based mediums—and the inclusion of unconventional and commonplace materials create a link between the artwork and everyday life. Defying the rules and expectations for materials liberates LeDonne’s creative process from creative rigidity. Disdain for perfectionism is a thematic and aesthetic element of their work.
Artist Statement
My work is reflective of my experience as a non-binary person and the ways presenting and existing as such in public has both affirmed and challenged me. Through hand-drawn text and original photography I commemorate thoughts and feelings in a way that broadens their application beyond my own experience and connects them to our collective queer story.
Gina Washington
Gina Washington was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and graduated with an MFA in Photography from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. She considers herself “a Child of the Universe” and has traveled to many places collecting images and connecting artists.
Gina has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. Most recently, she was awarded a residency with Akron Soul Train Art Museum and the Cleveland Foundation Equity in the Arts Fund grant as she creates art “by any means necessary.” She is the
founder of Mateza Gallery LLC on Etsy and, as a master collaborator, co-founded The Visit Arts Collective. Ultimately her goal is to bring clarity and solutions to the chaos in the world through art and to make art accessible to all people, especially the disenfranchised and underrepresented in the global community.
Artist Statement
This project, Me, Myself, and I, is a creative exploration of finding my place in a complex and conflicted society. It is an uncovering of my voice through self-portraiture. All artists, at some point in their careers, explore identity. I start by examining themes connected to childhood sayings and fairytales that influenced my upbringing and others. Those childhood sayings also allowed me to position myself within the frame of what it is to be a young girl, now a woman in a culture built out of White Supremacy. At the heart of my work, identity is paramount. Where do I fit in, how do you see me, and how do I see myself contextually in this society? Trin T Minh-ha said it best when she stated: “you and I are close, we intertwine; you may stand on the other side of the hill once in a while, but you may also be me while remaining what you are and what I am not.” ― Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism This intertwining, being anywhere I choose to hang my hat. Accepting yourself comes with the understanding that others outside your culture may not feel the same. The images were created using artificial intelligence in combination with the selfie. It is a fascinating approach that uses the image and language I provide to bring me to light. All of the layers further complicate an already intricate conception of self. Butterflies, an Afro, compassionate Black woman, were the prompts. Binary code is a system of ones and zeros that I use on top of images. Using this medium is problematic. Now that code is within each image. Ultimately, I am aware that the algorithms behind these programs are biased like the programmers. It is that circle of looks Minh-ha illustrates in her film Reassemblage as an outsider entering a space as the other. How do you document what is not a part of you? How will I use something artificial to explain my becoming? This project is just the beginning of the exploration.
Alexa Wehrman
Alexa Wehrman (She/Her) is a figurative artist and native of Cincinnati, Ohio currently living in Cleveland. Recently, her work has revolving around relationships of the body, pornography and the modern and art historical nude.
Her work was featured in the 2nd Annual Juried Fresno Printmakers Guild Print Exhibition in Fresno (CA) and in the Have Your Say Exhibition with the Grosse Pointe Artists Association Gallery in Grosse Pointe Farms (MI). Additionally, she has shown her work in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Cleveland. Wehrman is a mural artist for Flexware Innovations and The Contemporary Art Center of Cincinnati’s UnMuseum and was recently published in Juiced! Magazine’s Intimacy V1N3. She was a Senior Apprentice with ArtWorks Cincinnati in 2019 and 2021 she interned at both Kaiser Gallery and Ingenuity Cleveland. She was the designer and lead artist for the community project The Lake Erie Monster at the 2021 Ingenuity Fest On the Lake.
Jun Zhang
Jun Zhang is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher, currently based in Amsterdam. His practice focuses on topics such as identity belonging, immigrants' cultural integration, ecology future, decolonizing nature, post-Anthropocene, indigenous sciences, etc.
Jun’s artistic practice often starts from a fascination with an alien landscape or space (for example extraordinary geological heritage or abandoned industrial relics). Through field research and material experimenting, Jun searches to fathom and grasp these sites’ mysterious internal energy which he then metabolises and conveys through his artistic language – be it fiction, material object, or performance. Through his work, Jun seeks to evoke scenarios that invite critical reflection on the relation between human cultures, spiritual worlds, and natural environments. His investigations lead him from site-specific aspects (such as historical contexts, ancient technologies and crafts), over folklore and mythology to belief, witchcraft, and protoscience.
Therewith, Jun’s practice focuses both on nature/social sciences (such as climatology, geology, archeology) and occults sciences (such as astrology, alchemy, witchcraft). Through the integration of nature/social sciences and occults sciences, his works try to explore an ecological future and anti- Anthropocentrism world in which human culture is deeply entangled with geoenergy and planetary metabolism.
Artist Statement
Nomadic Washerwomen is based on the artistic research about the public washing space as well as its derived folklore.
Through video and site-specific installations, this project tries to re-create the narrative of night washerwomen legend under the post-COVID context, to correct the discrimination and stigmatization of washerwomen and Asian female. Through a supernatural being with divine powers intervening in the life-and-death transformation process of mundane life, this project attempts to challenge the negative impression of women and Asian people in the field of social hygiene, it also tries to create a cultural identity for Asian female.
Anna Brody (she/they) is an artist and educator currently based out of Tucson, Arizona and some other places. She works with video, performance, and photography to describe and explore the non-linear, non-binary world of simultaneous connection and lateral growth. Their video installations and interactive performances express a lifetime preoccupation with the layering of romantic, familial, and platonic love relationships in our lives, and the mutual labor and trust required for them to thrive. As a queer and non-binary artist and educator, they hope only to shift decisively away from the transactional, and towards the transformational. Anna graduated magna cum laude with a B.F.A. from the Savannah College of Art and Design, and received her M.F.A. in Photo, Video, & Imaging from the University of Arizona in May 2021. Their work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Yale MFA Thesis exhibition and a screening at Librería Casa Bosques in Mexico City in 2021.
Artist Statement
My work addresses love relationships of all intersecting kinds, and the internalized values that mediate them through video installation, performance, photography, and audioscape. I seek to dissolve the barrier between knowing something and feeling it, and I’m curious as to how aligning actions with words might begin to repair the disconnect often found there, and build trust in my own queer emotional future and the resilience of our collective heart. From this perspective, I undergo embodied inquiries of endurance, risk, and trust, often engaging repetition in its capacity to create both comfort and tedium. In both performance and video I deal explicitly with the physical labor involved in communicating through mutual cooperation and negotiative compromise. Themes of interdependence, attachment, and devotion are explored alongside questions of self-determination and autonomy of identity. The actions undertaken in my performances are also simple, often referencing adolescence. What we learn as children about love in all of its iterations is usually unconsciously absorbed, and I am curious as to whether the deliberate nature of the gestures might countermand the unhelpful lessons of childhood media and social influence, and reinforce the more positive ones by creating new muscle memories in our hearts.
My creative practice centers around becoming more comfortable with the fact that everything beyond the self is a variable requiring faith and acceptance, a relinquishing of control. Behind all of my work is a fundamentally connective nature, and an understanding that the drive to try anyway–to attempt to grow and hope and thrive together in community– in the face of so many unknowns and so little control is our species’ collective insanity and communal tenderness, and the only thing lighting our way into an uncertain future.
Glenda Drew
My creative work is based at the intersections of visual culture and social change, with a particular emphasis on the working class. My subjects include country musicians, waitresses, feminists and precarious workers. My practice is multifaceted in form and includes film/video, motion graphics, photography, graphics, interactivity and community participation. I was an active member of Paper Tiger Television in San Francisco for several years, a defining experience that continues to anchor and shape my work, from the DIY aesthetic and approach aimed at unpacking media technologies, to creating accessible work that asks critical questions. I exhibit my work nationally and internationally. My work has been featured in Leonardo, Bitch! and The Washington Post. I am currently a Professor of Design specializing in digital media at UC Davis.
(Non)linear Light.
My daughter was born on December 19, 2003. He became my son sometime in 2022. I can’t say the exact day. But the government agreed on December 12. There was an inner war. It was not my war. But I watched it from the distance of my body. Helpless. There was an outer war. It was part my war — the cuts, the burns, the terror. There is a transformation now, inner, outer and more cuts, this time by a doctor. The throughline is his eyes. The iris scanner knows; it is free of gender bias. The use of a “linear light” blending mode between portraits of the past and present reveal a nonlinear light through an algorithm of alteration.
(Non)linear Light is printed on silver metallic paper that reflects inner light.
--> max
My daughter was born on December 19, 2003. He became my son sometime in 2022. I can’t say the exact day. But the government agreed on December 12. There was an inner war. It was not my war. But I watched it from the distance of my body. Helpless. There was an outer war. It was part my war — the cuts, the burns, the terror. There is a transformation now, inner, outer and more cuts, this time by a doctor. I strain to see through to his past. This interactive piece uses portraits, blending modes, time-based media and augmented reality (AR) to visualize a tumultuous journey.
The AR is achieved through the download and use of the free Artivive app. You can preview the video that is shown through the app on this Vimeo link: https://vimeo.com/781976697
Cameron Gorman
Cameron Gorman is a writer, painter, and journalist based in Ohio. Cameron holds an M.F.A. From The Ohio State University and a B.S. in Journalism from Kent State.
Artist Statement
Cameron Gorman is a nonbinary, afab artist who works in the fields of poetry, nonfiction, video art, and painting. These found footage videos challenge the norms of media ownership in order to critique ownership of the body. In ‘Generation Loss,’ the viewer is confronted with the commodification of alternative gender expressionism through 90s media, including shock talk shows. In ‘History Lesson,’ which contains poetry performances, the history of the blending of gender and sexuality is explored through a digital interface. “Have I Told You I Loved You?” Explores gendered affection in the age of robotics.
Seth LeDonne
Seth LeDonne creates work that highlights the novelty and profoundness of everyday life. Their recent bodies of work examine masculinity, reliance on technology, humankind’s relationship with the natural world, apocalyptic poetry, and mental wellness. Central to LeDonne’s work is providing the viewer with a point of relatability through warmth or humor. Their work advocates for the usefulness of reflection and self-expression as self-care tools.
Seth is inspired by the urgency of water-based mediums—and the inclusion of unconventional and commonplace materials create a link between the artwork and everyday life. Defying the rules and expectations for materials liberates LeDonne’s creative process from creative rigidity. Disdain for perfectionism is a thematic and aesthetic element of their work.
Artist Statement
My work is reflective of my experience as a non-binary person and the ways presenting and existing as such in public has both affirmed and challenged me. Through hand-drawn text and original photography I commemorate thoughts and feelings in a way that broadens their application beyond my own experience and connects them to our collective queer story.
Gina Washington
Gina Washington was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, and graduated with an MFA in Photography from Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. She considers herself “a Child of the Universe” and has traveled to many places collecting images and connecting artists.
Gina has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. Most recently, she was awarded a residency with Akron Soul Train Art Museum and the Cleveland Foundation Equity in the Arts Fund grant as she creates art “by any means necessary.” She is the
founder of Mateza Gallery LLC on Etsy and, as a master collaborator, co-founded The Visit Arts Collective. Ultimately her goal is to bring clarity and solutions to the chaos in the world through art and to make art accessible to all people, especially the disenfranchised and underrepresented in the global community.
Artist Statement
This project, Me, Myself, and I, is a creative exploration of finding my place in a complex and conflicted society. It is an uncovering of my voice through self-portraiture. All artists, at some point in their careers, explore identity. I start by examining themes connected to childhood sayings and fairytales that influenced my upbringing and others. Those childhood sayings also allowed me to position myself within the frame of what it is to be a young girl, now a woman in a culture built out of White Supremacy. At the heart of my work, identity is paramount. Where do I fit in, how do you see me, and how do I see myself contextually in this society? Trin T Minh-ha said it best when she stated: “you and I are close, we intertwine; you may stand on the other side of the hill once in a while, but you may also be me while remaining what you are and what I am not.” ― Trinh T. Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism This intertwining, being anywhere I choose to hang my hat. Accepting yourself comes with the understanding that others outside your culture may not feel the same. The images were created using artificial intelligence in combination with the selfie. It is a fascinating approach that uses the image and language I provide to bring me to light. All of the layers further complicate an already intricate conception of self. Butterflies, an Afro, compassionate Black woman, were the prompts. Binary code is a system of ones and zeros that I use on top of images. Using this medium is problematic. Now that code is within each image. Ultimately, I am aware that the algorithms behind these programs are biased like the programmers. It is that circle of looks Minh-ha illustrates in her film Reassemblage as an outsider entering a space as the other. How do you document what is not a part of you? How will I use something artificial to explain my becoming? This project is just the beginning of the exploration.
Alexa Wehrman
Alexa Wehrman (She/Her) is a figurative artist and native of Cincinnati, Ohio currently living in Cleveland. Recently, her work has revolving around relationships of the body, pornography and the modern and art historical nude.
Her work was featured in the 2nd Annual Juried Fresno Printmakers Guild Print Exhibition in Fresno (CA) and in the Have Your Say Exhibition with the Grosse Pointe Artists Association Gallery in Grosse Pointe Farms (MI). Additionally, she has shown her work in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Cleveland. Wehrman is a mural artist for Flexware Innovations and The Contemporary Art Center of Cincinnati’s UnMuseum and was recently published in Juiced! Magazine’s Intimacy V1N3. She was a Senior Apprentice with ArtWorks Cincinnati in 2019 and 2021 she interned at both Kaiser Gallery and Ingenuity Cleveland. She was the designer and lead artist for the community project The Lake Erie Monster at the 2021 Ingenuity Fest On the Lake.
Jun Zhang
Jun Zhang is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher, currently based in Amsterdam. His practice focuses on topics such as identity belonging, immigrants' cultural integration, ecology future, decolonizing nature, post-Anthropocene, indigenous sciences, etc.
Jun’s artistic practice often starts from a fascination with an alien landscape or space (for example extraordinary geological heritage or abandoned industrial relics). Through field research and material experimenting, Jun searches to fathom and grasp these sites’ mysterious internal energy which he then metabolises and conveys through his artistic language – be it fiction, material object, or performance. Through his work, Jun seeks to evoke scenarios that invite critical reflection on the relation between human cultures, spiritual worlds, and natural environments. His investigations lead him from site-specific aspects (such as historical contexts, ancient technologies and crafts), over folklore and mythology to belief, witchcraft, and protoscience.
Therewith, Jun’s practice focuses both on nature/social sciences (such as climatology, geology, archeology) and occults sciences (such as astrology, alchemy, witchcraft). Through the integration of nature/social sciences and occults sciences, his works try to explore an ecological future and anti- Anthropocentrism world in which human culture is deeply entangled with geoenergy and planetary metabolism.
Artist Statement
Nomadic Washerwomen is based on the artistic research about the public washing space as well as its derived folklore.
Through video and site-specific installations, this project tries to re-create the narrative of night washerwomen legend under the post-COVID context, to correct the discrimination and stigmatization of washerwomen and Asian female. Through a supernatural being with divine powers intervening in the life-and-death transformation process of mundane life, this project attempts to challenge the negative impression of women and Asian people in the field of social hygiene, it also tries to create a cultural identity for Asian female.