In the works that make up Parallels, land and water are highlighted in different contexts — from a waterfall to a fish tank —that connect across  common forms, materials, and a shared ephemerality. Nara Park contemplates the parallels between the cycle of life as demonstrated by varying forms of nature. The way rocks are formed, the way water flows and freezes, and the way moss grows — these processes are not very different from each other. Similar, too, are their processes of decay. 

Park’s interpretation of nature is somewhat unusual in her sculptures and installations. She uses packaging boxes that she custom-designs to resemble rocks and plants as false representations of nature. The surface of the boxes are printed with patterns of stone or plants. Her items of mass-reproducible nature exemplify our contemporary desire to mimic nature in a quick and convenient way. She explores how far she can push the boundaries of imitation in order to inspire reverence and respect for its visual effect. She does not aim to trick the viewer with the faux, but rather generate life from it. 

In Park’s fabrications, the distinction between reality and representation vanishes. Some of her works incorporate actual water which is combined with her boxes evoking sacredness with irony. The incorporation of water in these simulations of nature takes into consideration the practical and spiritual roles it plays as an essential element. There is admiration and hope for life where there is water. Park’s work allows the viewer to explore the symbolic meanings of water that are parallel to life.

If We Came From Nowhere Here, Why Can’t We Go Somewhere There? is a photography and video-based exhibit charting journeys into temporality, flux, and Afrofuturism as explored by self-identified women of Black/African descent–Charmaine Nicole Bee, Nakeya Brown, Sonia Louise Davis and her partner and collaborator Ivan Forde, Danielle Deadwyler, Bree Gant, Naima Green, Dhool Hassan, Janna Ireland, Kali-Ma Nazarene, and Sienna Pinderhughes.

Taking its title from the song “Imagination” by noted jazz musician and Afrofuturist artist Sun Ra, If We Came From Nowhere Here, Why Can’t We Go Somewhere There? features portraiture, found photography, collage, and video art that challenge us to explore the “somewhere there” as both a metaphor for the site of possibility as well as the journey to recontextualize the present moment. Constructing and deconstructing narratives of Blackness and womanhood, these emerging artists mine their personal histories and occupy a liminal space (Liu), illustrating that  “every act of creation is also an act of thought, and an act of thought is a creative act, because it is defined above all by its capacity to de-create the real.” (Agamben) Through the act of de-creating, these artists are creating  new histories and new trajectories of Black critical theory.

Works cited: 

Agamben,Giorgio. “Sixth International Video Week”, Centre Saint-Gervais, Geneva, Switzerland. November 1995.  Lecture.

Liu, Hung. “Blues Notes for Blues People,” Weems Live: Past Tense/Future Perfect. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY. 25 April 2014. Lecture.