The Hybrid of Being

Curated by Kalia Brooks Nelson

Westbeth Gallery, 55 Bethune St, 10014, NYC

Exhibition: April 20th - 28th 2018

“The artists in this show use the hybrid form to subvert concepts of singularity,” according to a curator’s statement.

Each artist takes a unique approach to representing the mixed parts that portray human reality more accurately. In so doing, their work helps the viewer understand how the exchange of materials and ideas become a currency by which new associations of subjective experience are formed. A myriad of themes are at play: the politics of nationality, race, labor, gender, and sexuality, that directly inform the way the human body appears in the world – as well as the relations of power that are inflicted upon it. The show also features artwork that evokes the faculties of the mind – memory, language, consciousness, and judgment – as they are informed through psychological events, social interaction, mundane objects, technology, education, and the built environment. The artists in this exhibition undermine the myth of essential unity to create space for new radical affiliations to develop in artistic practice, and cultural consciousness. This exhibition rests on the notion that difference creates a productive opportunity for disparate resources, techniques, and origins to discursively express the plurality of the human experience.