Exhibition Views of Instruments of Memory
Photos by Gina Clyne
Instruments of Memory
Curated by Claudia Pretelin, PhD
Includes work by Dana Funaro, B. Neimeth, Aneesa Shami and Patricia Yossen
February 26 – April 30, 2022
Inquire about purchasing artwork by emailing info@thestudio203.org.
Instruments of Memory presents artistic work that investigates materiality in relation to history, place, time, and remembrance. This exhibition features new and recent work by four artists based in Los Angeles, California: Dana Funaro, B. Neimeth, Aneesa Shami, and Patricia Yossen. With practices spanning ceramics, painting, photography, fiber art, and sound, the artists investigate how places, landscapes, remains, and objects produce and affect identity and how memory is linked to the tactile and intuitive qualities of the materials.
An extension of the Instruments of Memory site, which began as an online project documenting the work of women in the arts, IoM is a growing community that seeks to promote the work of women from different latitudes through in-depth conversations, exhibitions, and programming with different community partners. This exhibition is the first of our collaborations with Studio 203, an artist-run space in Los Angeles founded by Aneesa and Grant Zizzo.
Opening Reception of Instruments of Memory
Photos by Gina Clyne
Public Programs
About the curator
Claudia Pretelin is a Mexican art historian, independent curator, and arts administrator based in Los Angeles, California. She holds a B.A. in communications and received her M.A. and Ph.D. in art history from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Her academic work has specialized in the fields of photo history and contemporary art. She has lectured in Mexico, Argentina, and the United States and her work has been published in magazines such as Alquimia, Revista de Arte y Diseño, La Palabra y El Hombre, and Terremoto. For more than ten years she worked for Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide and has also assisted & coordinated research and exhibitions in photo collections, museums, and art galleries, including Rochester Contemporary Art Center (RoCo) and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). She currently works in the studio of renowned artist Gary Baseman. Pretelin is the Founder &Curator of www.instrumentsofmemory.com, a site that documents conversations with women in the arts published as interviews and oral history.
www.instrumentsofmemory.com
@instrumentsofmemory
About the artists
Dana Funaro
Dana Funaro is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. Her work is a meditation on the human experience and an attempt to understand our relationships to one another within the cosmos. In search of a balance between control and chance, she uses materials as metaphors to explore themes of time, memory, grief, acceptance, and healing. Loss, growth, and transformation all leave behind memories that are powerfully symbolic. Materials with these inherent qualities are intrinsic in her work.
www.danafunaro.com/
@dana_funaro
B. Neimeth
B. Neimeth is a Los Angeles-based visual artist and teacher whose research examines familial and intimate relationships. Through archives, photographs, video, writing, and sound, she explores the flexibility of memory and its connection to space. She has shown internationally at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in Singapore, Human Resources in Los Angeles, the Center for Sex and Culture in San Francisco, and ROSEGALLERY in Los Angeles. Her work has been published in the Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly Journal and reviewed in What’s on LA, Fabrik, and Lenscratch. Her work is part of the collections in the California Institute of the Arts and Yale University Libraries.
www.bneimeth.com
@bneimeth
Aneesa Shami
Aneesa Shami is an artist and researcher based in Los Angeles using recycled materials to create fiber art. Her work references the sublime and world mythologies to evoke a sense of the collective unconscious within her imagery. Shami holds Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in both Fiber and Art History from the Kansas City Art Institute. She was the Textile Arts | Los Angeles AIR at Helms Design Center in 2018 and was a Fellow for the Mildred’s Lane Attention Labs: Order of the Third Bird in 2015. Shami’s work has been exhibited nationally in galleries and museums. She recently created costumes for Planet City (2020), directed by Liam Young, which was commissioned for the NGV Triennial 2020 in Melbourne, Australia. Aneesa Shami is also the co-owner and director of Studio 203, an artist-run space in Los Angeles that collaborates with artists to create exhibitions and host workshops and performances.
www.aneesashami.com
@aneesashami
Patricia Yossen
Patricia Yossen was born in the rural town of Santa Fe, Argentina. She studied education and sculpture and her life in the countryside has a profound influence on her artwork and pedagogy as an art educator. In 1996 she moved to Mexico City, where she studied techniques in stone carving and ceramics. In 2005, she moved to New York, where she worked in the education department at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Museo del Barrio. Yossen received an MFA in sculpture at Pratt Institute and subsequently relocated to Los Angeles, where she currently works as an art educator at Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), and is a Professor at Occidental College where she leads the ColLABorate workshop. Her work as an artist has been shown at numerous galleries in Argentina, Mexico, Spain, New York, and Los Angeles.
www.patriciayossen.com
@pyossen