Bring it home

"Featuring artists and designers engaged with issues of equity and identity, Bring It Home uses gift-economy strategies to enlist viewers as collaborators and expand territory for diverse voices. Risograph-printed posters by all 10 exhibition participants are distributed free to audiences--via in-person pickup and the postal service--with the invitation to install the show themselves in private or public spaces. This expansive show responds to to shifting perspectives on art production and display, foregrounds representation of voices that have traditionally not been given space, and centers public engagement at the nexus of the COVID era and the national conversation around social justice. The exhibition title refers to people reinventing ideas of "home" during quarantine, as well as artists claiming and disrupting visual languages with personal meaning. Bring It Home embraces and investigates the currency of the poster, a public and immediate surface for artists, designers and communities to disseminate information, ideas, and beliefs. An essential platform during seminal points in the history of social movements, the poster recently has played a critical role in conversations around race, gender, culture, and equity. In consideration of this history, the show reimagines poster-project and exhibition models with collaborative strategies--in line with the practices of participating artists--to transcend institutional walls and engage audiences beyond usual art centers. The exhibition exists primarily in spaces determined by individuals who hang up posters. Bring It Home also has a traditional presentation inside Usdan Gallery, the poster pick-up hub for the Bennington College community. We encourage people to document the show as they install or encounter it, and to share images via social media. Artwork posters were printed at the College's Word and Image Lab using a Risograph, a 1980s analog method experiencing a renaissance among artists, designers and independent publishers. When the show concludes, a Riso-printed catalog will document the project, including audience-created images and social-media sharing. Works by Pouya Ahmadi, Hazel Mandujano and Juan Capistran, Cole Lu, visual arts faculty member Mary Lum, Helina Metaferia, Silas Munro, Adriana Monsalve and Homie House Press, Rin Kim Ni, Ramon Tejada, and Kelly Walters. Curated by Ramon Tejada, MFA '03, and Anne Thompson, Director and Curator of the Suzanne Lemberg Usdan Gallery and visual arts faculty at Bennington College. Ramon is a (New Yorkino / American) designer (as Estudio Ramon) and educator based in Providence, RI. He works in a hybrid design/teaching practice focusing on collaboration, inclusion, unearthing and the responsible expansion of design, a practice he has named "puncturing," and is an Assistant Professor in the Graphic Design Department at RISD." -- Gallery web site.

Catalog of an exhibition held at Usdan Gallery, Bennington College, Vermont, from March 5-May 5, 2021.