What did I expect to find?
Shanjana Mahmud and Freya Powell
February 28 - March 26, 2017
Opening Reception: Tues. Feb. 28th. 5-9PM
Radio silence and real estate took Freya Powell and Shanjana Mahmud to the desert. Powell travelled to La Zona del Silencio in Northern Mexico, a vortex of magnetic waves that are said to have caused a U.S. Athena Missile to crash. Mahmud traveled to New Mexico to look at a property for sale, a few acres of land with a double wide, a greenhouse, and a flatbed truck. Both trips led to video projects as well as these fragments in digital prints, silkscreens, sculptures, and risographs.
Shanjana Mahmud is a multidisciplinary artist. Her videos, drawings, and prints focus on the variable and the indefinite, touch and distance. Mahmud received her MFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 2008 and BFA from Southern Methodist University in 2005. She attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2007 and has participated in group shows at institutions including Liliana Bloch Gallery in Dallas, Texas (2015), Machine Project in Los Angeles, California (2014), The Bronx Museum (2013), Bronx, NY. Her current body of work draws in questions of subjectivity and the multiple manifestations of the self. Mahmud is based in Brooklyn, New York.
Freya Powell received an MFA from Hunter College, New York, NY (2012) and a BA from Bard College, Annandale-On-Hudson, NY (2006). Her work has been exhibited in solo shows at Art in General, Brooklyn, NY (2017), Herron School of Art and Design, Indianapolis, IN (2017), Arts Santa Monica, Barcelona, Spain (2014) and Emerson Dorsch, Miami, FL (2013). She has participated in group shows at institutions including EFA Project Space, New York, NY (2016), Queens Museum, Corona, NY (2016), Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY (2015), #1 Cartagena: the First International Biennale of Art, Cartagena de India, Colombia (2014), and the Bronx Museum, Bronx, NY (2013). Her work is in the collections of the New York Public Library; Bard College; the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; and Hunter College.