For Immediate Release MEDIA CONTACT: Kat Skraba (323)-259-2749 or kskraba@oxy.edu



GENERATION WHY:
ARTISTS OF CONSCIENCE SPEAK
Art Exhibition

Opening Reception: Thurs. Feb. 28, 2002, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m.

In light of the state of the planet, peace, and war, join us for an exhibition of video, photography, sound works, and installations by artists addressing the fate of soldiers in the military, patriotism, human rights, government, labor, the complex history of wars in Afghanistan, alternate readings of the symbol of the American flag, and more...including works by apocalypse twins (Lisa Adams & Jill Giegerich), Lida Abdullah, Nancy Buchanan, Eszter Delgado and Martin Betz, Marc Landes, Christine Morla, and Sheila Pinkel.

The exhibition will run from Feb. 28 - Mar. 22, 2002 at the Weingart and Mullin Galleries, Occidental College, 1600 Campus Road in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, CA 90041.

Gallery Hours are Mon. - Fri., 10 - 4:30 and by appointment.
Street and visitor parking is available at Occidental College on Bird Road outside of Weingart Center and at the visitor parking lot on Campus Road.

For directions to Occidental College Galleries visit: http://www.oxy.edu/oxy/welcome/directions/,
call (323)-259-2749, or e-mail kskraba@oxy.edu.

A round table discussion with Sheila Pinkel on her photographic works addressing the California Prison Labor system, and a discussion of the industry as an expanding business enterprise is scheduled for Thurs. March 14, 2002 at 7:00 p.m. in the Mullin Gallery.

The show's title Generation Why is a spin off of the term Generation -X and intends to debunk the media propagated myth of any generation branded as being lazy, disinterested, and complicit - any generation coined with yuppie excess, apathy or Me-generation sensibilities. Artists featured in this exhibition are drawn from many different generations, are concerned about the course of world events, and actively participate in dialogues within their community both inside and out of their art careers.

Known for creating t-shirts for protesters at the Los Angeles Democratic Convention in 2000 that read "I am unarmed", apocalypse twins (Lisa Adams & Jill Giegerich), a Los Angeles-based collaborative art team, will present a new video work "You are here", comprised of images of the last building standing in Hiroshima and the mouth of a dead body, juxtaposed with images of Betty Crocker's Sea foam jell-o swirl bliss. Their aim is to make work that is "confrontational, subliminal, absurd, comedic, comprehensible, incomprehensible, and, finally, useful, ...attempting to woo the spectator into a momentary ego collapse". For more information go to www.apocalypsetwins.com

Afghan artist Lida Abdullah, who left her native country a few years after the former-Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, has produced work in many media - video, film, photography, installation, and performance - in an attempt to explore the convergences between artistic practice and politics. She "attempts to remove the metaphorical veils through which some would like to 'read?' (her) work not circumscribed by banal stereotypes. In order to truly understand the plight of Afghani women, one would have to understand the cultural underpinnings, which made possible the subjugations of women". Abdullah's video, a contemporary self-portrait, silently shows the image of her face with various objects, such as text, photographs, or bubble gum bubbles floating from her mouth.

Nancy Buchanan, known for political commentary posters, miniature dollhouse sculptures of the perfect family of consumers, and false advertisements, like the work she will be showing, a "National Mortality Consciousness Day" poster. Buchanan's works, are often socio-documentaries with a wry sense of humor and have been exhibited and screened in galleries and museums in the U.S. and Europe. Recent productions include Developing: "The Idea of Home", an interactive CD-ROM examining the notion of "home" in the context of the politics of land use, "Social Works" at LAICA, "American Dreams" (the US submissions to a Triennial exhibit in Maribor, Slovenia), and is currently preparing a show of works incorporating the American flag for May of this year.

Eszter Delgado and Martin Betz's work often delves into subjects of those impoverished, waiting, waste-lands, and wanderers, this time in a dense installation including audio of military drill marching songs, photos of the bottoms of feet (dirty, muddy, and cracked), and shoe-shine boxes covered and painted with black shoe polish. Articulating the role and destiny of soldiers in the military in wars past (Vietnam) and present, this haunting work establishes a context of militarism as related to current events, and the most humble of profession of shoe-shining.

Marc Landes' audio sculpture is a commentary on patriotism and flag waving in memory and recognition of the bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the carpet bombings of Vietnam and Laos, the streets of Baghdad, and now the war-ravaged Afghanistan. Landes states: "The disregard for human life is both sickening and barbaric. What justice is there in this "crusade against evildoers", while we "wave our flags in the name of patriotism (and don't forget to shop too!), but at the same we are not to question this war, why September 11th occurred, the disappearance and jailing of hundreds of American Muslims and Arabs or our rapidly dwindling civil liberties". Landes has recently composed works with a mad-maxian terror of the future, trash-laden wasteland environments for a Newtown exhibition and an altar of buzzing abandoned obsolete computer monitors and televisions at Huntington Beach Art Center.

Christine Morla's installation of violently rendered charcoal wall-drawings juxtaposed with army toy figures and spoons are installed like a battleground in a staggered, chaotic fashion on the floor. "Fighting Spoons" compares domestic violence to military action. Informed by hate crimes, neighborhood wars, and global conflicts, this installation hints at the clashing and interweaving of cultures and questions what happens when two or more cultures are intermeshed together. Morla has recently curated an exhibition of Phillipino-American artists and "Ghetto Fabulous" an exhibition exploring inner city crisis and their aesthetics.

Sheila Pinkel's photography addressing the California prison industrial complex labor industry stems from a catalog of the hundreds of objects produced by workers in Californian prisons, that many state institutions are forced to purchase. Pinkel has widely exhibited her documentary photography and digital works on subjects such as Cambodian-Americans experience and memory, an immigrant family for 10 years, the conditions and wages of museum guards, and under-privileged humans' experience. Pinkel will be discussing not only her work addressing the prison labor industry, but host a community discussion addressing issues such as the dramatic rise in prison populations and the use of prisoners for labor at Mullin Gallery on Thursday, March 14, at 7:00 p.m.

GENERATION WHY promises to be an opportunity to address concerns of our times, as well as of art, and will compliment and support a whole host of other related exhibitions and actions in the region, nation, and abroad in support of a humanistic movement toward global change.