Seven Senses

1. Dialogues of witness, dispersals, and affections.
2. Expressions of the space between us.
3. Meditations on belonging and drafting our shared futures.
4. Communicating from plant to insect, from insect to animal, from animal to human.
5. "Reflections of the way life used to be.”
6. Impacting the knowable world using the unknowable.
7. The elixir of information.
   Seven Senses features the work of seven artists: George Bolster, Elise Gardella, Jeff Kasper, J. Soto, Maya Suess, Abbey Williams, Wong Kit Yi, who have spent a year participating in EFA’s SHIFT Residency. While conventionally, only five senses are recognized, these artists take on the interactivity and play implicit in (at least) seven. Collectively, their work explores spaces and the sense we make of them: those between our internal and external selves (2); the social constructions of our bodies (5); our sense of self and other (1); our understanding of language and how it connects us (3); how we make sense of space (internal, external, and infinite) (6); the expanse of our consciousness and culture (3); perceptions of time (7), the world, universe and multiverse (4).

George Bolster explores the stories of renowned SETI scientists and how they were guided toward their passion for science. Bolster addresses mentoring as an important factor in the acquisition of knowledge, creative thinking and wonder amongst scientists (and artists?). For Seven Senses, Bolster presents an interview with Margaret Race, NASA’s Planetary Protector, on her role at SETI Institute and her lifelong friendship with her mentor, the astronaut Scott Carpenter.

Elise Gardella’s 'book of hours' is an irreligious devotional. But unbelievers are not necessarily faithless, or lacking a thirst for a love supreme, or without confidence in a kinder, truly equitable world. At least Elise Gardella is not. Pushed by a need to strengthen her sense of hope and to understand more significantly social and personal circumstance, she offers a meditation—part testimony, part prayer— for these bad times and the hours of despond.

Drawing upon methods from self-help, role-play, conflict management, and therapy, Jeff Kasper’s wrestling embrace (index) directly references disciplines concerned with understanding human spatial interaction. Kasper employs participation and performance to navigate experiences of vulnerability and trauma, questioning what we learn about ourselves and the subjectivities of others, during close, physical, encounters.

J Soto presents a collection of thoughts on the expression of histories of brown folks of color and tenderness as resistance. It rides the line between the quantifiable and the unquantifiable, informed in part from “hard” statistical data, and “soft” information, from demographic reports and weather patterns, to letters between friends, hand-drawn maps, and plant-clippings kept alive.

Maya Suess offers three wishes and one hex in the form of drawings. Each drawing is infused with intention offered by artists whose impactful work is making change in both measurable and unmeasurable ways. The drawings are active objects, intended to have an effect on the world around them through a process of magic and intention. Viewers are invited to take a postcard reproduction of each drawing, and disseminate their potency.

As SHIFT is about making more space as artists (and not administrators), Abbey Williams’ piece is an “administrative” exercise in creating a bridge to her earlier self, where she identified more holistically as an artist. She revisits and recontextualizes her work/practice/history as an artist in an effort to reconnect to this lost identity.

Wong Kit Yi asks, how long is forever? In legal contracts, genetics, art, and our personal lives, we often employ expressions like “in perpetuity," “everlasting," "permanent," even "immortal." Yet the meaning of these terms is different in every situation and often alters in response to changing circumstances. Wong Kit Yi traces this conundrum across history and into current biotechnology fields, such as gene splicing and reverse aging.

SHIFT Residency was launched in August 2010 to provide studio space and peer support for practicing artists who also work as arts professionals for organizations in New York City. This program honors these individuals with a unique environment to build on their own art practices. Seven artists were selected to be residents, based on their outstanding contributions to the art community plus their potential for artistic growth in a shared interactive environment. The unique nature of SHIFT Residency draws out unspoken challenges and considerations in the lives of its participating artists, who dedicate a significant portion of their time towards supporting other artists and the art community.
ARTIST BIOS

George Bolster has exhibited in museums and galleries in Europe, America and Canada. His recent solo exhibitions include: Towards A Universal Sublime, Galeria HIT, Bratislava, SK; Amazement Insulates Us All, Memento Vivere, The Lab, Dublin, IE; Un/natural History: Drowning Captiva, Nuit Blanche, Toronto, CA; High on Christ, Chung King Projects, Los Angeles, US; sociodesic: a space for the three great loves, Galway Art Centre, IE. His recent group exhibitions include In The Future, Collyer Bristow Gallery, London, UK; Contact, New Museum (NUMU), Los Gatos, CA; /seconds, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, UAE; and These Days: Elegies for Modern Times, Mass MoCA, Mass.. In 2013, he was awarded a residency from the Rauschenberg Foundation, he will be Artist In Residence at Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris, FR, in 2019.

Elise Gardella is an artist and curator. Her current work developed from a focus on social inequities, persistent injustice, and commonplace cruelties. This reality pushed against her hope and engagement to provoke change. She is the founder of Presenting at 17 and was a resident at The Shandaken Project. A solo show, Gray Shapeless Monster, at La MaMa Gallery, investigated intimate partner violence. She earned a B.F.A from California College of the Arts and a M.F.A from the Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College. Upcoming group show, INTERVAL: Interiors to Being, July 2019, Berlin.

Jeff Kasper is a research-based artist working in installation, time-based media, publications, public pedagogy and social engagement. Jeff is currently an artist-in-residence with Art Beyond Sight’s Art & Disability Residency, and is a fellow at CUE Art Foundation. His work has recently been exhibited at The 8th Floor, the 26th International Graphic Design Biennial Brno, The James Gallery, Queens Museum, The Graduate Institute for Design, Ethnography and Social Thought at The New School, and the Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology at Connecticut College. He is the Director of Engagement at More Art, teaches art & social practice at Queens College CUNY and Pratt Institute, and is currently a mentor for the NYFA Immigrant Artist Program in social practice.

J. Soto is a queer transgender interdisciplinary artist, writer, and arts organizer. He has curated and performed work for The National Queer Arts Festival (San Francisco), Links Hall (Chicago), as well as Vox Populi (Philadelphia) among others nationally. His collaborative writing project, "Ya Presente Ayer" can be found in Support Networks, Chicago Social Practice History Series (University of Chicago Press). His organizing projects include the Latinx Artists Retreat (LXAR), which he recently launched with a group of Latinx artists and administrators and the Latinx Artist Visibility Award (LAVA) for Ox-Bow School of Art in partnership with The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is also a recent Fellow of the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Advocacy Leadership Institute (ALI). His recent writing can be found in Original Plumbing and Apogee Journal: Queer History, Queer Now Folio. He is currently Programs Coordinator for Equity & Inclusion Initiatives at Movement Research and Production & Access Coordinator at Eyebeam.

Maya Suess is an artist, educator and arts administrator. She makes drawings, installations, videos, performances and other mischievous entities. Maya has also shown work at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, Anthology Film Archives, The European Cultural Capital, Umeå2014 , the Vancouver Art Gallery, The London Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, among many others. She holds a BFA in Media Arts from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and an MFA in contemporary performance from Simon Fraser University. Maya works as the Managing Director of Flux Factory.

Abbey Williams is a Brooklyn based video artist. She received her BFA from The Cooper Union, her MFA from Bard College, and was a participant at The Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2004. Her work has been exhibited at (selected); TATE Britain, London; National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; The Studio Museum in Harlem, and Williams was a part of the 2005 Greater New York exhibition at MoMA PS1. She has had solo exhibitions at Franklin Art Works in Minneapolis, MN; and in New York at The Barbara Walters Gallery at Sarah Lawrence College, Bellwether Gallery and Foxy Production. Her work has been written about in Artforum.com, The New York Times, Flash Art, The New Yorker… and has been described as haunting, plaintive, and “coolly incicise.”

Wong Kit Yi (b. Hong Kong) lives and works between Hong Kong and New York. Recent solo presentations include Magic Wands, Batons and DNA Splicers, Art Basel Hong Kong, Hong Kong (2018), and Futures, Again, P!, New York (2017). Her works have been included in group projects such as Survival Kit 9, Latvian Centre for Contemporary Art, Riga (2017), In Search of Miss Ruthless, Para Site, Hong Kong (2017), and Bringing the World into the World, Queens Museum, New York (2014). Wong’s work has been reviewed in the New York Times, Art in America, Contemporary Art Daily, e-flux conversations, Art Review, ARTnews, Asian Art News, The Art Newspaper, Art Asia Pacific, China Daily, LEAP and Modern Painters. Wong received her MFA from Yale University in 2012. Her most recent film A River in the Freezer (2017) was collected by the Kadist Art Foundation. In general, she seeks biological answers to metaphysical questions.