The 36th Parallel

Curated by Beth Davila Waldman

August 12 - September 9, 2023

Closing reception Saturday, September 9th 6-9pm

Performance by Alex H. Nichols at 6:30pm

Participating Artists

Ellen Driscoll ~ Brooklyn

Uma Rani Iyli ~ Los Angeles / San Francisco 

Liz Miller Kovacs ~ Berlin

Katie Murken ~ Oakland

Alex H. Nichols ~ San Francisco

Beth Davila Waldman ~ Los Angeles / Kingston

Minoosh Zomorodinia ~ San Francisco

EDITORS' PICK

The 36th Parallel

by Alitzah Oros

↳  READ

The 36th Parallel explores the cross sections of conscious and unconscious landscapes informed by visual navigations guided by historic, domestic and economic compasses. The 36th parallel north in particular has been defined as is a circle of latitude that is 36 degrees north of the Earth's equatorial plane that crosses Africa, the Mediterranean Sea, Asia, the Pacific Ocean, North America and the Atlantic Ocean. In the ancient Mediterranean world, its role for navigation and geography was similar to that played by the Equator today. Featuring select works by seven interdisciplinary practices artists, The 36th Parallel opens the conversation with various entry points of our social and cultural geography through material, image and assemblages. The exhibition is a global platform of geographic and cultural connective tissues that speaks to the root of her own artistic practice as well as those of fellow participating artists from San Francisco to Los Angeles, Brooklyn to Berlin, India to Iran.

Curator Beth Davila Waldman has found inspiration for this exhibition in exploring liminal realms through terrains of ground and water, industry and economy, sanctuary and prosperity. Fellow Wellesley College graduate of Waldman’s Cathy Simon recently published book Occupation: Boundary, Art, Architecture and Culture at the Water which defines idea the of liminal realms as “transitional places, combinations of people and goods, events and structures, habitats of interaction between ideas, things and territories; sites for exchange and shipping, making and taking.” This Book along side those of Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities and Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost, as well as Thomas Cole’s Series “The Course of Empire” have been of service in developing the concepts of this exhibition. As Waldman walks the grounds of the Hudson Valley during her monthly visits to her Kingston studio as well as frequent family visits to Charlottesville where she has frequently toured Jefferson’s Monticello as well as the downtown alley where Heather Heyer was run over and killed during the Unite the Right protest in 2017, the charged role of landscape throughout time continued to ignite for her. In this exhibit, the current atmosphere of the Anthropocene is considered on macro and micro levels, across our great oceans as well as within a hands reach. 

Uma Rani Iyli

Winding and Unwinding 1, 2015

Gold Thread and plexi and wire

21 x 18 x 2.5 inches (framed)

New York based sculptor, drawer, and public artist Ellen Driscoll states, “If indeed the tiniest speck of dust can be considered the trace material of the Big Bang, then my work inserts a human index to make points and lines of connection on that continuum from the infinitesimal to the gigantic.” With materials that range from recycled plastic to Roman style mosaic, to cloth, glass, or walnut ink, Driscoll’s investigations—provoked by chance encounter– search for that deeper affinity underneath what is seemingly “unlike”. Her work leans into ideas from Italo Calvino’s Six Memos for the Next Millennium. She highlights this concept from this short but dense book: “Knowledge of the world tends to dissolve the solidity of the world, leading to a perception of all that is infinitely minute, light, and mobile…But these are only the outward appearances of a single common substance that….if stirred by profound emotion….may be changed into what most differs from it.”

Ellen Driscoll

Portrait 21, 2023

Ink & Ink Jet Pigment on Paper

12.5 x 18 inches

Framed: 17.5 x 20 7/8 inches

Berlin based Liz Miller Kovacs’ work encompasses photography, sculpture, and video, combining the exploration of materials and environmental interventions. She creates interventions in future histories by rethinking the relationship between the figure and the landscape. Miller Kovacs researches locations where industry has altered the terrain and documents her experience of these sites using a high-resolution mirrorless camera. These spaces are excavated, depleted, polluted by industry, and often hidden from public view. The feminine form is often present in the scene, bearing witness to the dystopian landscapes. The figure also draws parallels between how our culture exploits nature and the object hood of the feminine. Her studio practice is a search for meaning in a time when image eclipses reality, creating an increasingly inhospitable and toxic habitat, reflecting upon the Anthropocene era and how it is changing our psychological and physiological conditions. Despite the negative consequences of industrialization and consumption, Miller Kovacs is fascinated by the aesthetic of the Anthropocene and aims to create images and objects that invite contemplation of the contradictory conditions that structure our reality.

Liz Miller Kovacs

Embalse de Gossán, 2023

Unique Ultraviolet Print on Copper mounted on Dibond

16 x 24 inches

Oakland based artist Katie Murken gravitates towards ubiquitous materials cast-off from consumer culture because for her they represent the invisibility and devaluation of women’s labor. Exploring the terrains of her new home in California where she is raising her own family now, her highlighted work creates new mappings guiding us to consider the intersection of the food industry and its relationship with our drought ridden terrain using the visual and material language of cut out coupons. San Francisco based Alex H. Nichols’s featured work combines multiple artistic disciplines to explore the complex and dynamic nature of personal identity. She encourages viewers to reflect on their own experiences in navigating the internal, external, conscious, unconscious, and historic factors that have impacted their perception of identity. Her work showcases the myriad ways to navigate the personal experience of being a women and female artist while originating from different cultures and societies. Uma Rani Iyli considers the notion of women’s work of weaving and its link to India’s colonial past which shifted the profitable industry of weaving from the hands of India to the pockets of England. Each line that crosses another echoes the tradition of weaving and tell the tale of the political, cultural and colonial heritage of her background.

Katie Murken

Fresh Wild Whole, 2020

Collage Photography

15 x 22 inches

Based in Los Angeles and New York’s Hudson Valley, curator and artist Beth Davila Waldman’s work explores the impact of socio-political trends on cultural landscapes, often through imagery laden with indicators of economic and social status, presented in a manner that emulates the sheer stress of imposed change. Waldman’s constructed vistas re-conceive the notion of sanctuary amidst the realities of colonization, and invite meditations on civil access. San Francisco based Iranian artist Raheleh (Minoosh) Zomorodinia is an interdisciplinary artist who makes visible the emotional and psychological reflections of her mind’s eye inspired by nature and her environments. She employs walking as a catalyst to reference the power of technology as a colonial structure while negotiating boundaries of land. Zomorodinia’s strolling sometimes reimagine our relationships between nature, land, and technology, while addressing transformation of memories into actual physical space absurdly.

Beth Davila Waldman

Merging Grounds No. 15, 2018

Diptych; Line and Aquatint Etching on Hahnemuhle Etching Paper

Paper size: 22 x 30.5 inches each

Framed: 49.75 x 36.25 inches

These artists each gravitate towards ideas that have led Waldman as an artist for two decades. Carrying around Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost from studio to studio, residency to residency, the idea of embracing the unknown in order to find one’s own space has resonated with her in both her curatorial and artistic practice. How do we translate what has been defined? Perhaps what has been defined equally allows us new points of departure.

Leading with the idea of landscape, mapping, site and narratives, The 36th Parallel is an extension of her personal odyssey of the universal exchanges that occur on personal, political and social levels.

WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Ellen Driscoll’s work encompasses sculpture, drawing, and public art. Recent public installations include “CartOURgraphy” for Middle College High School and the International High School in Queens, “Night to Day, Here and Away” for the Sarasota National Cemetery, and “Bower” with Joyce Hwang and Matt Hume at Artpark commissioned by Mary MIss’s City as Living Laboratory. Earlier works include “The Loophole of Retreat” at the Whitney Museum at Phillip Morris, and “As Above, So Below” for Grand Central Terminal. Her awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bunting Institute, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Massachusetts Council on the Arts, the LEF Foundation, the Rhode Island Foundation, Anonymous Was a Woman, and a Fine Arts Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work is in major collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of Art. She was Program Director of Studio Arts from 2013 to 2021 and continues as Visiting Professor of Sculpture at Bard College. She has been awarded the Outstanding Educator of the Year award for 2018 from the International Sculpture Center.

Ellen Driscoll, "Family Blanket", 2015, Wool, 96 x 72in

Liz Miller Kovacs is a Los Angeles-born photographer and interdisciplinary artist based in Berlin, Germany. Her studio practice is rooted in queer punk, post-feminism, and activist performance. She has exhibited her photographs in major art centers and galleries around North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. Most recently, she was shortlisted for the Kranj Photography award. Her videos have recently been included in the Untitled Art Fair Special Projects, Millennium Film Journal, Alicante Video Art Festival, Maiden L.A., Video Art Today, and S.F. Photo Fairs. She was an active member of the international multimedia art movement, Extraction: Art on the Edge of the Abyss. A graduate of the San Francisco Art Institute with an MFA in New Genres, Miller Kovacs also completed a PhD in Visual Arts at the Sydney College of the Arts in Australia and was awarded both the IPRS and IPA international fellowships for the duration of her research. Her work has been included in multiple contemporary art and academic publications.

Liz Miller Kovacs, "Geamana Venus", Ed. 3, Archival Pigment Prints on Fine Art Hahnenmüle Paper, 40x60in

Katie Murken (b. 1980, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is a Bay Area artist working in sculpture, collage and installation. Murken holds an MFA in Book Arts and Printmaking from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and BFA with Honors from The Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA. Her work has been exhibited at an.ä.log gallery, San Francisco, CA; Woolf Gallery, London, UK; The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Grounds for Sculpture, Hamilton, NJ; The Soap Factory, Minneapolis, MN; and The Contemporary Arts Center of Las Vegas, Las Vegas, NV. Her work is included in the collections of The Pennsylvania Convention Center, The William Paterson University, and the J. Edgar Louise S. Monroe Library at Loyola University.

Katie Murken, Resorcery, 2022, Cut Paper Collage Photography, 33x24in

Alex H. Nichols, born in San Francisco, is a USA-based interdisciplinary artist whose work aims to bear witness to her life and decisions. With a disarming physicality, rigor, and humor, she wields language, performance, video, photography, painting, and installation to gain voice, meeting the resistance of her external contexts as well as her internal psychological landscape playfully. Alex has exhibited and performed locally and internationally, working with renowned institutions, including the 18th Street Art Center in Los Angeles, Headlands Center For The Arts, Djerassi, Bamboo Curtain Studios in Taipei, SF Recology in San Francisco, and Minnesota Street Projects. She has also exhibited widely, participating in Art fairs, including ZONA MACO, Mexico City, MACO Museum of Contemporary art Oaxaca, and Art Miami. She holds a graduate writing degree from the California College of Arts.

Alex H. Nichols,"While I Was Waiting for Permission To Be Me", 2019, Installation of Video

Uma Rani Iyli (b. Bangalore, India 1974) received her foundation art education at the College of Fine Arts, Bangalore. At the age of twenty-one, she moved to the United States and continued her studies at California College of Arts graduating in 2003 with a BFA in Sculpture. Over the past few years, Uma’s career has launched with various nationwide exhibitions including the New York Chelsea based JanKossens Gallery and Marin Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2018, Uma’s work was featured by the Zellerbach Foundation, highlighted with an interview in Under The Radar contemporary artists by ArtSlant, and launched for the first time at Miami Scope Art Fair. In 2019, her work was recognized with a nomination for the TOSA Award by Minnesota Street Project, the SECA award by the SFMOMA, and featured in the exhibition “Woven Stories” at the Lancaster Museum of Art and History. In 2020, her work was included in The de Young Open Exhibition at the De Young Museum in San Francisco. In 2021, Uma completed her largest corporate permanent installation commissioned by the Meta Open Arts Program for their Fremont, California location. Uma maintains two studios in the San Francisco Bay Area, one in San Francisco at Dogpatch Collective and another in her home studio in Portola Valley.

Uma Rani Iyli, "Winding and Unwinding 1", 2015, Gold Thread and Plexi and Wire, 21x18x2.5in

Beth Davila Waldman (b. Princeton, NY 1975) pursued her career in the arts initially at Wellesley College where she earned a BA with a double degree in art history and studio art, graduating with honors in studio arts with a focus on sculpture. She continued her commitment to exploring site and material as her conceptual focus at SFAI from 2003 to 2005 with a BFA in sculpture where she was awarded the 2004 Harold E. Weiner Memorial Sculpture Award. Since, Waldman has been awarded residencies by 18th Street Art Center, Kala Art Institute, Playa Institute, and Edition/Basel and exhibited her work nationally and internationally in Hong Kong, Mexico City, and Basel. Waldman maintains studios in Los Angeles, CA and the Hudson Valley, NY.

Beth Davila Waldman,"Merging Grounds No. 15", 20218, Diptych Line and Aquatint Etching on Hahnenmüle Etching Paper, 44.5x30in

Raheleh (Minoosh) Zomorodinia is an Iranian-born interdisciplinary artist. She makes visible emotional and psychological reflections of her mind's eye inspired by nature/environment. Zomorodinia employs walking as a catalyst to reference the power of technology as a colonial structure while negotiating land boundaries. Her “strolling” reimagines relationships between land and technology, addressing transformations of memories into physical space. Zomorodinia serves with Southern Exposures’s Curatorial Council, Berkeley Art Center, SFCamerawork Program Committee, and is Co-Chair of Women Eco Artists Dialog. Her awards/residences/ grants include YBCA 100, Kala Media Fellowship, Headlands Center for the Arts, Djerassi Residency, Recology Artist Residency, Alternative Exposure Award, and California Art Council Grants. She exhibits locally/internationally including SF Asian Art Museum, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco Arts Commission, Nevada Museum of Art and is featured in the SF Chronicle, Hyperallergic, KQED and numerous media outlets. She earned her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, and MA/BA from Azad University, Tehran.

Raheleh (Minoosh) Zomorondinia,"The Decolonial Atlas: 19 Walks Santa Fe 2030 Steps", 2018. Burned Fabric on Canvas, 14.5x11.5in