As part of our mission to foment creative contemporary collisions, we planned two interconnected spring shows challenging questions of modernity, technology, ritual, and human agency. What power does an individual hold in a society? How can human agency form and disrupt societal collectives? How do rituals and traditions gain new meanings against contemporary environments? This two-part exhibition face these questions. Extra Human will be on the theme of witches, witchcraft, witch-hunts, and all the socio-political connections these entail. Extra Human is a platform for artists to respond to a multitude of creative, intellectual, and political themes, including, but not limited to, the demonization of powerful women, and the contemporary resurgence of magic as a tool to combat oppressive structures. Through multiple time periods, including our own, there has been a correlation between the rise of self-identified witches and fascism. Can magic, then, be understood as a different type of power, a way to combat political power that threatens many of our communities? This show fills our annual In Grace We Trust slot, an exhibition pays tribute to Grace Taylor Ely, whose home and vision created the basis for the Ely Center itself. This celebration of Grace as a forward-thinking philanthropist allows us to explore the feminist interpretations inherent in the witch theme. How do women respond to oppression and persecution through the supernatural? What types of gendered double standards exist when we think about power? How are powerful women deemed witches in the cultural imagination, and for what reasons are witches both revered and reviled? What does it mean to believe in ritual, even at the expense of reason? What is the interaction between the witch and nature, particularly in the arenas of herbology and potions? How does what is “human” interact with the supernatural to create a bodily experience that is not-quite-either?
Featured Artists: Austin Furtak-Cole, Molly Gambardella, Jacquelyn Gleisner, Allison Hornak, Scott Lawrence, Martha Lewis, Annie Sailer, Suzanna Scott, Briana Williams
