A Beautiful Stillness: Artists Mariam Ghani, Erin Ellen Kelly, Maria Molteni and Cauleen Smith in Conversation
Where: American Folk Art Museum
2 Lincoln Square
212-595-9533 Price: Free
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THIS IS A VIRTUAL EVENT!
A radical Christian sect led to America by Mother Ann Lee in 1774, the Shakers adopted a communal lifestyle dedicated to the principles of celibacy, pacifism, egalitarianism, and simple living. They brought about a utopian society based on gender and race equality.
Mariam Ghani, Erin Ellen Kelly, Maria Molteni and Cauleen Smith all refer to Shaker communal life in their meditations on the American landscape and imagination.
Using the grounds and the collection of Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, Massachusetts, Maria Molteni’s film, Sacred Sheets, “evokes and reawakens the spirit of Shaker routine.”
Shot at the Shaker Village in Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, Mariam Ghani and Erin Ellen Kelly’s photograph and film series, When the Spirits Moved Them, They Moved, reveal “Shaker landscaping, architecture, song and dance as ways of organizing being-in-common”.
As in Cauleen Smith’s films, Pilgrim and Sojourner, the Shaker historic villages in New York, NY, appear as utopian ventures where American “people [came] together with intention and determination to build a world, systems, and cultures that are bigger than themselves.”
In conversation with art writer Julie Schneider, the artists will present their research-based artworks that revisit episodes in Shaker history, then share their fascinations for the Shaker gift drawings and the Era of manifestations. Drawing from artifacts on view in the exhibition Anything but Simple: Gift Drawings and the Shaker Aesthetic, this multi-part program will offer an opportunity to reflect on Shaker influence on American material culture, and discuss the possibilities that the sect’s lifestyle opens for us today.
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