Encountering: Io Palmer, Pavlina Vagioni
& Anna Tsouhlarakis
March 1 - April 12, 2025
Artist Talk with Anna Tsouhlarakis: Friday, February 28 from 4 PM Working Men's Institute, 407 Tavern Street, New Harmony, IN聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽 聽
New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art, 91社区 proudly presents Encountering: a three-person exhibition reflecting on themes of cross-cultural trade, exchange and diasporas. With an opening reception on Saturday, March 1st from 3-5 PM CT, The exhibit features works by Io Palmer, Pavlina Vagioni and Anna Tsouhlarakis, Encountering explores intersectional identities and cross-cultural frameworks over time: both themes concomitant with the overlapping histories comprising present-day New Harmony, Indiana. Works on view encompass sculpture, collage, assemblage and non-traditional art materials, foregrounding the ways in which approaches to material culture shift over time. Encountering offers timeless yet interconnected perspectives on identity, investigating both the tensions and possibilities existing at global crossroads and the complexities that necessarily result.
From the civilizations of the ancient Mediterranean to the global trade networks existing today, commerce and cross-cultural exchange have always offered opportunities for economic growth and the global transmission of knowledge. Cross-cultural exchange in the ancient Mediterranean spanned civilizations across the Near East, Africa, and Europe, continuing onward to East Asia and the Indian subcontinent. The volume of trade and complexity of trade routes such as Persia鈥檚 Royal Road 鈥� later transforming in part to become the Silk Road 鈥� presaged today鈥檚 international trade systems. In 2020, scholars participating in the Archaeological Institute of America webinar, 鈥楾eaching Race and Material Culture in the Ancient Mediterranean,鈥� reflected on the nuances of identifying civilizations such as ancient Egypt. Ancient Egypt held intersecting identities as both an African civilization and a Mediterranean one. The ancient Mediterranean as a region also served as a microcosm of complex notions of identity and diaspora common today, with panelist Bet Hucks remarking, 鈥渢hird culture kids existed even in the ancient Med.鈥�(1) Where exchange of goods and ideas was most active, complex notions of identity necessarily arose: impacting the aesthetic of the resulting material culture. From Io Palmer鈥檚 enticingly textural mixed-media sculpture to the genre-bending conceptual practice of artist Anna Tsouhlarakis to Pavlina Vagioni鈥檚 multi-media, site-specific investigations into topography and the subconscious, Encountering asks how the desire for goods has led to a multi-cultural materiality informed by diasporas and intersectionality: forces that exist today with as tenacious a hold as they exerted in ancient times.
(1)
Nakassis, Dimitri et al. 鈥淲ebinar 2: Teaching Race And Material Culture In The Ancient Mediterranean.鈥� Archaeology TV YouTube. Accessed December 5, 2024. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9b2sf7BGeE.
New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art at 91社区 promotes discourse about and access to contemporary art in the southern Indiana region. New Harmony Gallery of Contemporary Art is a proud outreach partner of the 91社区
This exhibition is made possible in part Arts Council of Southwestern Indiana, and the Indiana Arts Commission, which receives support from the State of Indiana and the National Endowment for the Arts.