Continuing through October 15, 2011
Not inborn, the “self” is constructed and allowed, a privilege of money, education, and location on the globe. The message of “Selfless. Selfish. Selfiness.” and its nine artists – Annie Arnold, Carol Benson, Shelby Cunningham, Val Hunnicutt, Wura-Natasha Ogunji, Kerry Pacillio, Terri Thornton, Kathy Webster, and Tiffany Wolf is that identity is always under negotiation.
Austin artist Wura-Natasha Ogunji’s “Two” is a short, smart single-channel video with a message about finding one’s self in another. As though mimicking the sounds of birth and death, the video jumps and stutters while two almost identical women scream, yelp, and breath. An obsessively rendered register of ticket stubs, Shelby Cunningham’s “Every movie I have seen in the past 10 years, 2002 – 2011” reveals a sense of self formed, manipulated, sometimes mollycoddled and sometimes beaten up by the Hollywood juggernaut. “Selfless. Selfish. Selfiness.” questions the bedrock of identity politics without political correctness.
