Home:
Shelter and Habitat
in Contemporary Art

Exhibition Statement

For most of us home is a personalized place of comfort, privacy, and security. Inside its walls we create spaces that reflect who we are and what is important to us. We also take refuge and respite from the rest of the world in these enclosures, believing in the safety that four walls and a roof can offer. In Home: Habitat and Shelter in Contemporary Art, 28 artists deconstructed their meanings of home and assembled their concepts through photography, painting, sculpture, and video. The result was engaging art that invited visitors to rethink notions about the places they live.

To sculptors Sasha Petrenko and Gina Tuzzi, home is not a fixed unit, but a nomadic dwelling that can be brought with us wherever we go. Ari Salomon’s photographs provide intimate views of the interior of his great aunt’s apartment where she lived for 30 years. In contrast, Henry Wessel’s photographs are taken from a voyeur’s perspective. His haunting exterior shots leave us to imagine the people and stories inhabiting these homes. Hannah Chalew’s mixed media works portray the many abandoned structures left to decay in her hometown of New Orleans, after Hurricane Katrina. Painter Dean Monogenis stretches the idea of home, with buildings or ruins placed in imagined landscapes. Filmmaker Carrie Schneider captures the seemingly eternal flames of a house that she burned and rebuilt, 12 times, over two years, on a small island in Wisconsin.

Erika Leppmann, SMA Director in 2014, brought this exhibition to Ashland, because “The idea of ‘home’ has been a compelling issue for artists in the past decade for numerous reasons including: geo-political strife, world­wide economic decline, and changing definitions of family.” The exhibition, curated by Carrie Lederer of the Bedford Gallery in Walnut Creek, CA, received rave reviews from a diverse group of patrons when shown at that gallery. Home: Habitat and Shelter in Contemporary Art was sponsored by Golden-Fields Construction & Design, Ltd. and the Ashland Springs Hotel.

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