CURATORS

Jenna Hammed

Guest Curatorial Program (2023)

Material Evidence

Baxter St 2023 Guest Curatorial Initiative Recipient Jenna Hamed is an artist & art worker based in Queens. She obtained a Bachelor’s Degree in Fashion and Fine Art from Eastern Michigan University,and a Master’s Degree in Arts Politics from New York University. Jenna’s background in tactile-driven practices and critical examination of art production has influenced her practice in documentation methods via image-making, poetics, archiving, and the book format. You can find some of Jenna’s image-and text-based works in small press publications such as Dada Duende Record Club Journal, Faint Line Press, Everybody Press, Newtown Literary, Koukash Review, parapraxis, Sukoon Mag, and others. You cannot find most of Jenna’s work, as she produces publications, prints and writings in limited or unique editions, distributed when, where and to whom she feels like.

Baxter St is pleased to announce Material Evidence, a two-person exhibition curated by Baxter St 2023 Guest Curatorial Initiative Recipient, Jenna Hamed. Material Evidence proposes the extension of an image’s lifespan beyond the archive by introducing a conversation among multi-disciplinary lens based artists. With the works of Nazanin Noroozi and Esperanza Mayobre, Material Evidence assembles an array of works on canvas and paper alongside photographs and film footage that the artists use to vanish the original photographer’s presence, asserting their hand-applied revitalization of a historicized record. In this iteration of Nazanin Noroozi’s multimedia installation, This Bitter Earth, a 7-minute experimental moving image sequence features sourced material from her family’s archive, blueprint drawings and viral footage of recent historic catastrophic events across Tehran, Kabul and Beirut. 900+ still frames are manipulated and montaged using digital layering and analog mark-makings. The film is accompanied with an arrangement of natural fiber handmade papers containing photographic prints and pulp paintings ingrained into the papers’ composition.

Selections from Series A.M.O. (Arco Minero del Orinoco) by Esperanza Mayobre includes a monumental gridded drawing of gold bricks using acrylic and graphite on canvas, attempting to quantify the economic disparity resulting from the political exploitation of Venezuela’s natural resources. The drawing is exhibited alongside mixed media sculptures containing found materials and photographs from Mayobre’s archive depicting pivotal moments in this segment of the country’s history. The works in Material Evidence employ the photograph as a basis for process-oriented interventions, transforming the image and transcending its concept. Citing Roland Barthes’ theory of the death of the author as the birth of the reader, this exhibition follows the process of the artist “making” an image after the photographer’s capture. A special-edition artist’s book by the curator and artists will be on view and for sale on the occasion of the exhibition.