Exhibitions Archive
Accent Elimination
Nina KatchadourianLocation: Strauss Gallery, Hopkins Center
Our language and accent are fundamental elements of how we express and identify who we are, where we come from, and how we relate to one another. Yet, how often do we think about trying to alter our tone, our voice, or our words? Can you think of a time when you might have benefitted from adjusting your accent?
As an artist living and working in Brooklyn, New York, Nina Katchadourian would come across signs advertising “accent elimination” as she walked the city streets. Inspired by the seemingly paradoxical notion of improving one’s accent as a means of assimilation while still attempting to sustain one’s cultural identity, Katchadourian created the multimedia work, aptly titled Accent Elimination.
In it, Katchadourian explores language and identity and questions what an accent is at its core. As she explains:
My foreign-born parents who have lived in the United States for over forty years both have distinctive but hard-to-place accents that I have never been able to imitate correctly (and have not inherited). Inspired by posters advertising courses in “accent elimination,” I worked with my parents and professional speech improvement coach Sam Chwat intensively for several weeks in order to “neutralize” my parents’ accents and then teach each of them to me.
The Fractal Architectures
Laetitia SoulierLocation: Hood Downtown, 53 Main Street, Hanover, NH
The inaugural exhibition at the Hood Downtown Exhibition Space will feature the work of contemporary French photographer Laetitia Soulier. She bases her images and sculptures on the idea of fractal geometry, where each area has a direct scale relationship to the other—understanding a fraction of the world she creates implies comprehension of the whole. Of course, she enjoys simultaneously breaking these rules in her images with the addition of people, whose presence defies the otherwise logical scale relations. In this way, her work mixes logic and magic seamlessly, in a manner consistent with a certain stage in childhood development.
To achieve her effects, she builds carefully handcrafted models that are stages for the single lens of a camera. For each photograph she creates an entire universe. For each series of photographs—“The Matryoshka Dolls” and “The Square Roots”— the visual themes are constant, and many of the furniture pieces are reused, but the set is remade for each individual image. Despite laboring over the models for months, she still applies post-production to her work as well, to merge the various elements we see, and especially to get the lighting the way she wants it. Soulier moves effortlessly, and without prejudice, between the tools of the hand and those offered by the computer—between pliers and Photoshop.
The Craft of Art
Eric van HoveLocation: Jaffe-Friede Gallery, Hopkins Center, Open Tues.-Sat., 12:30-10:00 PM, Sun. 12:30-5:30 PM
In collaboration with the Studio Art Department and Dartmouth’s Artist-in-Residence Program, the Hood Museum of Art presents recent works by visiting Belgian artist Eric van Hove. Born in Guelma, Algeria, van Hove was raised in Yaoundé, Cameroon. In 2011, he moved to Marrakesh, Morocco, where he created his breakout V12 Laraki, an exact replica of the Mercedes-Benz engine of the same name, recently acquired by the museum. Produced in collaboration with about fifty-five local craftsmen, the sculpture showcases van Hove’s ingenuity and the brilliance of Maghreb craftsmanship. In addition to the majestic V12 Laraki, the exhibition includes an exploded V12 engine gearbox, and five smaller parts, all meticulously handcrafted using different techniques and with materials sourced from around Morocco.
Successive African art curators at the Hood Museum of Art have assembled an extraordinary and holistic vision of the arts of Africa that encompasses both important historical milestones and the multiple cultural and social vistas of this continent. Acquired over the past two years and on view together for the first time, these thirty-one exceptional objects map the contour of modern and contemporary African art from the 1960s to the present while also shedding critical light on the diversity of African artistic practices by multiple generations of artists. The installation includes an exciting array of paintings, photographs, sculptures, drawings, ceramic, and mixed media, including works by Ibrahim El Salahi, Lamidi Fakeye, Akin Fakeye, Owusu-Ankomah, Victor Ekpuk, Chike Obeagu, Candice Breitz, Nomusa Makhubu, Julien Sinzogan, Aida Muluneh, Halida Boughriet, Mario Macilau, Eric van Hove, Khulumeleni Magwaza, and Nidhal Chamekh.
Ice Cuts
Eric Aho
Vermont-based artist Eric Aho’s series of Ice Cuts paintings is inspired by the hole cut in the ice in front of a Finnish sauna, an aspect of Finnish culture that Aho’s family has maintained to this day. Intended for an icy immersion following the heat of the sauna, the avanto, as it is called in Finnish, underscores and personalizes the inherent contrasts in nature. Aho began the Ice Cuts series nine years ago, making one painting a year of the dark void produced by the act of sawing into the thick ice. This exhibition is the first to concentrate on the Ice Cuts paintings he has created to date. The central abstract form in these compositions provides the structure for experimentation with paint texture, surface, and subtly nuanced color, lending these frozen scenes both an austere beauty and a particular vibrancy. This exhibition brings together the major paintings in the series to date and smaller, related works on paper to offer unique insight into the artistic process.
Works from the Hood Museum of Art’s Permanent Collection
Contemporary Abstraction
This exhibition features paintings by both American and Indigenous Australian artists and reveals the strength of the Hood’s contemporary holdings, including a selection of recent acquisitions with new work by Pat Steir, Colleen Randall, and Brenda Garand.