The Phantom Wall
Jorge Cruz is excited to collaborate with Gallery AWA in presenting his new exhibition, The Phantom Wall; The Pervasive Politics of Prejudice. Gallery AWA has curated this exhibition with Jorge as part of its commitment to exhibiting art that encourages discourse on socially relevant topics.
The Phantom Wall is a wall made of light that represents the walls we carry inside our heads, the lighting designed by Greenpoint-based AWA Lighting Designers. The installation stands as a physical and ideological symbol of division and personal stagnation.
The Phantom Wall is intended to open discussions about both physical walls and the invisible walls that reside inside our heads. It aims to facilitate dialogue about the ways that we are divided from one and other.
Often we talk about physical walls, but neglect to consider the invisible walls lurking within our own psyches. These mental walls may manifest in the forms of prejudices, bigotry, biases, and detrimental labels intended to dehumanize, marginalize, and segregate our fellow human beings.
Walls can provide us safety and security, but they can also divide us and isolate us. People have a tendency to build imaginative walls that isolate and divide; negatively stressing our differences rather than embracing our similarities. The Phantom Wall reminds us that our mental walls keep us from understanding each other.
As a cultural metaphor, the Phantom Wall advocates open communication across societal barriers. As a personal metaphor, the Phantom Wall encourages all of us to reject the isolationist mentalities that segregate us from one and other. Jorge Cruz and Gallery AWA are delighted to collaborate on realizing a physical representation and discursive space for a topic matter that is unfortunately of utmost social pertinence, and would like to invite the public to engage in this discussion upon The Phantom Wall’s opening, October 7th.
The evening will feature the following additional artists:
Melissa Christine Goodrum - Facebook Profile
Melissa Christine Goodrum's poetry can be found in The Torch, The Tiny, Rhapsoidia, canwehaveourballback?, Transmission, a harpy flies down-a chapbook by Other Rooms Press and The Bowery Women Poems, an anthology. A collection of her poetry, definitions uprising, is available thanks to NY Quarterly Books. Last spring, Urbantgarde released a five-poet anthology interweaving her jazz-o-phile voice alongside some of her favorite contemporary poets: Billy Cancel, Ed Go, Susan Lewis, and Michael Whalen.
Billy Cancel - Facebook Profile
Billy Cancel is a Brooklyn-based video poet and performer whose works have appeared in Blazevox, Gobbet, Bombay Gin, Other Rooms, and West Wind Review, amongst others. A 2011 Pushcart Prize Nominee, notable performance include his role as ‘Dissolver Indignant (barfly)’ in Marianne Vitale’s “The Missing Book Of Spurs” at Performa13, the Theoretical Archaeology Group Annual Conference at University of Illinois, and Poet Transmit at Recess Gallery, curated by ESP-TV. His contribution to ‘4 WORDS’ was broadcast across Europe’s largest motion digital screen, for the 2016 Liverpool Provocations Art Festival. His latest body of work, PSYCHO’CLOCK is set for release in April on Hidden House Press. Learn more about him at www.BillyCancelPoetry.com
Ed Go - Facebook Profile
Ed Go‘s writing has appeared in various print and online journals, including Underground Voices, Breadcrumb Scabs, Bastards and Whores, Hinchas de Poesia, and In Between Altered States. His most recent work "new machines," a sequence of 20 prose pieces, was published last year in Urgent Bards, the first poetry anthology from UrbantGarde Press, and his chapbook Deleted Scenes from the Autobiography of Ed Go as told by Napoleon Id was published by Other Rooms Press in 2014. Learn more about him at edgosblog.wordpress.com
Michael Whalen - Facebook Profile
Michael Whalen is a Brooklyn-based poet, editor and proofreader. He earned an MA in writing from Miami University of Ohio in 2002 and an MFA in poetry from Brooklyn College in 2005. In 2007, he co-founded Other Rooms Press (OtherRoomsPress.Blogspot.com), an online journal, chapbook press and reading series, with Ed Go. His most recent chapbook, GROPING THE MUSE, was published in 2015.