4/ On Transcending Numbness
Golnar Adili, Niki Afsar, Yan Cynthia Chen, Steffani Jemison
Pfizer Building, 630 Flushing Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
On Transcending Numbness is a group exhibition that contemplates the tangled relationship between language and body. It examines the various ways in which four artists—Golnar Adili, Niki Afsar, Yan Cynthia Chen and Steffani Jemison— envision and engage with alternative systems of articulation, as well as investigate and dismantle histories that conditioned their means of expression.
For this exhibition, the central concept of numbness in relation to language and body is akin to connective tissue: to be numb is to be deprived of feelings, emotions and subsequently, words; yet the sensation of numbness is also linked to the body's physical state as a mode of self-preservation. The practices gathered here seek to imagine and employ different mediums of communication, reminding us that there are ways to heal the space of language and to transcend the numbness that comes from the feelings of lacking, incapacitation or precariousness.
In attempts to comprehend her own relationship to language, body and space, Brooklyn-based mixed-media artist Golnar Adili presents the viewer with a series of collages that employ the cutouts of her father’s gestures as captured in photographs after his immigration from Iran to the United States. By cross-investigating the notions of language, mental health and body, interdisciplinary Washington, D.C.-based artist and writer Niki Afsar ponders the reach that language has on our bodily self-perception. New York City-based artist and educator Yan Cynthia Chen posits sculpture as her primary media of inquiry as a response to her personal observations around nonverbal means of communication in an effort to question the complexities of language, body and scale. Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist Steffani Jemison, renowned for her contribution to examining the subject of language and body in relation to Black vernacular tradition, produces a body of work that expands on the poetics between body and the process of mark-making. Over the show’s duration, On Transcending Numbness will be accompanied by two respective live performances by Afsar and Chen, as well as feature a self-published selection of excerpts from Afsar’s poem, “Mesl Bolbol/Like a Nightingale.”
Throughout the display, On Transcending Numbness draws attention to the ways language and body are intrinsically interdependent, seemingly acting as an invisible yet vital extension of one another. In virtue of continuing challenges that arise from the inability to find sufficient ways to translate our experiences, stories, traumas and memories, the multifaceted nature of this exhibition aims to reflect on the methods with which the artists challenge these limits.
Read the exhibition catalog essay here.
Golnar Adili, Niki Afsar, Yan Cynthia Chen, Steffani Jemison
Pfizer Building, 630 Flushing Avenue, Brooklyn, NY
On Transcending Numbness is a group exhibition that contemplates the tangled relationship between language and body. It examines the various ways in which four artists—Golnar Adili, Niki Afsar, Yan Cynthia Chen and Steffani Jemison— envision and engage with alternative systems of articulation, as well as investigate and dismantle histories that conditioned their means of expression.
For this exhibition, the central concept of numbness in relation to language and body is akin to connective tissue: to be numb is to be deprived of feelings, emotions and subsequently, words; yet the sensation of numbness is also linked to the body's physical state as a mode of self-preservation. The practices gathered here seek to imagine and employ different mediums of communication, reminding us that there are ways to heal the space of language and to transcend the numbness that comes from the feelings of lacking, incapacitation or precariousness.
In attempts to comprehend her own relationship to language, body and space, Brooklyn-based mixed-media artist Golnar Adili presents the viewer with a series of collages that employ the cutouts of her father’s gestures as captured in photographs after his immigration from Iran to the United States. By cross-investigating the notions of language, mental health and body, interdisciplinary Washington, D.C.-based artist and writer Niki Afsar ponders the reach that language has on our bodily self-perception. New York City-based artist and educator Yan Cynthia Chen posits sculpture as her primary media of inquiry as a response to her personal observations around nonverbal means of communication in an effort to question the complexities of language, body and scale. Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist Steffani Jemison, renowned for her contribution to examining the subject of language and body in relation to Black vernacular tradition, produces a body of work that expands on the poetics between body and the process of mark-making. Over the show’s duration, On Transcending Numbness will be accompanied by two respective live performances by Afsar and Chen, as well as feature a self-published selection of excerpts from Afsar’s poem, “Mesl Bolbol/Like a Nightingale.”
Throughout the display, On Transcending Numbness draws attention to the ways language and body are intrinsically interdependent, seemingly acting as an invisible yet vital extension of one another. In virtue of continuing challenges that arise from the inability to find sufficient ways to translate our experiences, stories, traumas and memories, the multifaceted nature of this exhibition aims to reflect on the methods with which the artists challenge these limits.
Read the exhibition catalog essay here.
April 2022
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Installation view of On Transcending Numbness, Pfizer Building, Brooklyn, New York.
Installation view of On Transcending Numbness, Pfizer Building, Brooklyn, New York.