ANGIE JENNINGS, FIDENCIO MARTINEZ-PEREZ, KRISTIN NOWLIN

Opening Reception, September 11, 6-8:30pm

Closing Reception, October 1, 6-8:30pm

ANGIE JENNINGS‘ street photography of China and her ever changing face is the topic in “Modern Streets of an Ancient Empire”. This series is an ongoing project that studies the dichotomy of China and its ever-increasing modernity crossing over, sometimes, burying the great history of this most ancient country.

FIDENCIO MARTINEZ-PEREZ‘s practice examines the brown body, the battleground onto which events, perceptions and laws are formed. The Latino body has been the setting of exploitation, marginalization, and, recently, persecution. These events are reflected in his work through the perforation of newspaper clippings and maps, stand-in for brands, stereotypes, and wounds inflicted onto the foreign body. Many of the silhouettes and figures within these works are taken from the last photographs taken of his family before journey to the United States. In this way, they are the only documentation of his family’s existence but, through material manipulation, they speak of a shared experience of uncertain futures.

KRISTIN NOWLIN‘s current body of work responds to images used in print advertisements of the 1930’s, including such things as Norfolk and Western Railroad travel brochures promoting Virginia as “the land of romance, hospitality, and beauty”; other travel brochures carrying the slogan, “Carry Me Back to Old Virginia”; Maxwell House Coffee ads; and Coca-Cola ads. The original, idealized images that these advertisements featured are challenged and expanded in the black and white woodblock prints, perhaps showing a more accurate reality.