RIVERSIDE: All the World’s an Art Studio – New RAM exhibit

All the World’s an Art Studio

New RAM exhibit explores the streets, nightclubs, vehicles, and more as art-making spaces

You Are Breathing In It! Alternative Art Practices Exhibit and Companion Events
Exhibit: July 14-September 22; Reception: July 14, 7:00-10:00 p.m.
For more information, visit www.riversideartmuseum.org/YABII

Exhibit Curator Karla Diaz of Slanguage Studios, like many artists who allow the public to visit their art studios, is often asked, “Where is your art?” Karla’s answer? “You are breathing in it!” And so the seed for this group exhibition was planted.

You Are Breathing In It! Alternative Art Practices is an investigation of alternative artistic processes in contemporary art, highlighting artists from: Riverside; Los Angeles; San Jose; Chicago; Tijuana, Mexico; and San Juan, Puerto Rico. The exhibition features photographs, installations, films, music, drawings, and sculptures.

While many situate the site of artistic production in a traditional studio art space, these artists redefine the concept and use the streets, apartments/homes, nightclubs, or vehicles. Other artists in the exhibition appropriate spaces such as restaurants, storefronts, and other public spaces of gathering to make art, intervene, and lead discussions.

An expansive two-gallery exhibition with ongoing activities and companion events, You Are Breathing In it! presents a selection of varied and interactive media that travel far beyond the realm of formal aesthetics. The underlying objective of the works in the exhibit is to serve as a vehicle for engaging discussion, diversification, and cultivating meaningful relationships and experiences in an art context that is at once playful and commanding. Accompanying events and activities during the exhibition’s run will include: student-led discussions with Puerto Rican artist Christopher Rivera and his co-curatorial-based project, “Cave In,” that showcased artists inside a cave; a student-based curatorial internship project; art, writing, and performance workshops, such as Evelyn Serranos’ collective, NOMAD Lab, a community-based art project which designs and implements free art workshops that address the rise in criminal activity; a film screening and panel discussion by Tijuana-based media art collective Bulbo and their appropriation of a space and the twelve-step program format of the Alcoholics Anonymous group to lead discussions; an interactive mural hosted by Mobile Mural Lab; We Woke The World Festival, a living monument to the women’s suffrage movement, initiated by Ari Kletzky and centered on a participatory sing-along of a historic Suffragist-era song; an interactive listening workshop by Elana Mann based on her project in collaboration with musician Juliana Snapper, The People’s Microphony Camerata (PMC), an experimental choir exploring ideas of listening through sound, voice, and body.

Participating Artists include:
Radames “Juni” Figueroa
Cynthia Herrera
Evelyn Serrano and NOMAD Lab
Elana Mann
Ari Kletzky
Bulbo
Mobile Mural Lab
Angelica Muro
Juan Luna-Avin
Juan Angel Chavez
…with a special site-specific outdoor installation by Martin Sanchez, Riverside-based artist and founder of Tio’s Tacos

Accompanying Summer Educational Events Hosted by RAM:

Saturday, July 14, 2012
Opening Reception and Mobile Mural Lab Youth Workshop
Reception: 7:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.
Free and Open to the Public (Advanced sign-ups required for Mobile Mural Lab workshop, space is limited)
The opening Reception for the exhibition will be complemented with a collaborative mural workshop led by Mobile Mural Lab. Artists Roberto Del Hoyo and David Russell will lead youth through an all-day collaborative mural painted on their van, as well as an interactive digital projection onto the front of the museum.

Saturday, July 28, 2012
1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
NOMAD Lab’s Rag Doll-Making and Writing Workshop
Free and Open to the Public (Advanced sign-ups required, space is limited)
Artist project conceived by Evelyn Serrano
Workshop led by Ebony Williams
This workshop is a class that is currently taught in the Valle De Oro Community apartment complex in Valencia, California as part of the NOMAD Lab project. This class asks students to make dolls and write about them as a way to discuss issues surrounding stereotypes and identity.

Thursday, August 2nd, 2012

6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Ears’ Out! Listening Workshop with Elana Mann
Free and Open to the Public during Arts Walk (6:00 – 9:00 p.m.)
Participants will construct large ear-shaped signs to promote active listening, as well as invent devices to aid in the act of listening. Tubes, ear horns, and acoustical mirrors will be produced and used in order to listen to different environments. Open up your ears and tune into new information and knowledge about the spaces and people around you!

Thursday, August 23, 2012
6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
Film Screening of “Tijuaneados Anonymous” by Art Collective Bulbo
Free and Open to the Public
This film by Tijuana-based media art collective, Bulbo, documents the artists’ appropriation and implementation of a discussion and community-led group in Tijuana, Mexico. In the middle of a violent drug-related murdering chaos, the collective and community members use the 12-step program format of Alcoholics Anonymous as a platform for dialogue. Tijuaneados Anonymous is the first group in its kind to exist in Tijuana.

Sunday, August 26, 2012
1:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m.
“We Woke The World Festival, A Living Monument to Liberty” Conceived by Ari Kletzky
Open to the public, $3 per person suggested donation
Museum audiences are asked to remember and be part of the inaugural event for the monument by participating in a communal sing-along and live recording of a historic Suffragist-era song, which has never before been recorded. Suffragists wrote the song while in prison; it tells the story of their experience and marks this historic turning point in the nearly century-long struggle to secure women’s right to vote, which directly led to the 19th amendment guaranteeing that right. This ‘seed recording’ at the Riverside Art Museum will be used to launch a website, education program, and other future events such as a global, digital quilt of suffragist history and people’s contribution. A broad and all-encompassing cross-section of the community is essential in creating this momentous event.

Friday, September 21, 2012
6:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Closing Panel Discussion and Reception; Art and Public Space
Free and Open to the public
A panel discussion with Puerto Rican Artist Christopher Rivera and students from the Riverside Art Museum Student Curatorial Council (RAMSCC), a team of highly talented students of varying backgrounds who have curated small sections of the museum in response to the ideas explored in You Are Breathing In It! Christopher Rivera received his MFA from Hunter College in New York City and will discuss his work with students and his co-curatorial project, “Cave In,” an exhibition that takes place in Puerto Rico this summer. Closing reception festivities will follow.

RAM relies on the generosity of members and donors to support its exhibitions, education programs, and special events. A 50-plus-year-old, private, non-profit cultural arts institution housed in a National Historic 1929 building designed by Hearst Castle architect Julia Morgan, the museum welcomes over 50,000 visitors a year. The museum is open Tuesday – Saturday, 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. and Sunday, 12:00 noon – 4:00 p.m. For information on exhibits, events, classes, memberships, or sponsorship opportunities, visit www.RiversideArtMuseum.org. Find us on Facebook (www.facebook.com/riversideartmuseum) and Twitter (RAMRiverside).

This exhibit is sponsored by: The James Irvine Foundation, the City of Riverside, Altura Credit Union, and Burgess Moving and Storage.