“to arrive is never to arrive”

Skyline’s art gallery explores themes of displacement and reclamation

Guest artists present ‘to arrive is never to arrive,’ an exhibition examining immigration and identity through art

Woven pillar by artist Sanaz Safanasab showing intricate details and weaves in the form of an eye hiding within the cloth. Courtesy The Skyline View.

Aileen Bucog, The Skyline View

The Skyline College Art Gallery held the opening reception for its latest exhibition, “to arrive is never to arrive,” on Feb. 7 from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Art by Javier Roberto Carlos, Lorena Molina, and Sanaz Safanasab cohesively explores themes of political rupture, displacement and reclamation in the context of immigration. 

Art history professor Kathy Zarur runs the art gallery, typically curating exhibitions herself; this time, she invited guest curators to put a show together.

“It’s a wonderful opportunity to bring in new people,” Zarur said. “People who know the curators and the artists will come and pay closer attention. By bringing in guest curators, we’re highlighting this gallery even more.” 

The opening reception greeted visitors with opening remarks from Zarur and Off Hours — a curatorial collective that spotlights emerging Bay Area artists — who introduced the featured artists.

Zarur’s gallery practicum class and Off Hours installed and curated the exhibition together.

Katherine Jemima Hamilton, Shaelyn Hanes and Ebti — all working and practicing artists — formed the collective in November 2023, after first meeting at California College of the Arts.

“Shaelyn [Hanes] and I were in the curatorial practice program at CCA, which no longer exists. Ebti was in the MFA [masters of fine arts] program,” Hamilton said. “We’ve always curated in other people’s spaces. That gives us a lot of unique challenges, but also opportunities to work with artists in lots of different types of ways.”

Hanes said they found a lack of DIY spaces and opportunities for their peers to exhibit in the Bay Area.

“Off Hours came out of a want to build our community, create connections across our community, and give artists a platform,” Hanes said. 

While this show exhibits veteran artists, Ebti said that when they started, they wanted to keep artists early in their career in mind.

“People are still starting. We can give them space to show [their] work,” Ebti said.

Ebti also said Hamilton and Hanes give artists a conceptual framework with a curatorial statement, while she mentors younger artists. 

In her opening remarks, Hamilton asked open-ended questions for visitors to ponder as they viewed the gallery.

“Who decides the ethical boundaries between witnessing extraction and spectacle,” Hamilton said. “Do we want to know the answer, or do we want to have this information unknowable?” 

An Off Hours press release said the three artists “attempt to preserve aspects of themselves or the communities represented through strategies of concealment, refusal, trickery, reenactment and documentation.”

Sanaz Safanasab, an Iranian-American interdisciplinary artist whose work is based on cultural identity, displayed part of her woven series, “Unidentified Bodies.”

“They’re representing oppressed, displaced bodies,” Safanasab said. “They show the resistance of being oppressed.”

Safanasab said she wants visitors to see how identity can be multi-layered and opaque. 

“The one thing that is really important for me is to represent the traditions of textiles in Iran,” Safanasab said. “I want the viewers to see themselves abstracted, deconstructed and reconstructed again.”

Starting with a drawing and painting background, Safanasab’s masters of fine arts program introduced her to weaving  and she fell in love.

“It [weaving] just changed the trajectory of my practice,” Safanasab said.

Documentary filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist Javier Roberto Carlos displayed his three-channel film “Terrenos Fuera Y Dentro,” or “Inner and Outer Terrains” in English, throughout the reception. 

The film documents the tourist attraction “La Caminata Nocturna,” a five-hour United States border crossing reenactment led by people who experienced it firsthand.

“I heard about it in a podcast called Radio Ambulante by Daniel Alarcón. I thought it was a really interesting idea,” Carlos said. “I raised some funds and went to Hidalgo, Mexico to meet the people who make this.”

Carlos said the process began by spending a few weeks in the community without filming. He then went back to the U.S. to bring a crew of filmmakers, along with crew members in Mexico; the team filmed for nine days.

“So many immigrant stories are told by people that are not immigrants,” Carlos said. “It [the reenactment] is immigrants taking hold of their own narrative and being able to talk about it in a way where it’s poignant, informative and instrumental to their survival.”

Lorena Molina, a Salvadoran multidisciplinary artist who uses ecological elements in her work to explore resistance against displacement through community, displayed her photographic ensemble, “This Must Be the Place.”

“I immigrated here when I was 14. Most of my family left during the civil war,” Molina said. “I’m always thinking about, ‘How do you make a home in the margins … to create a place for yourself when you’ve been displaced?’”

Molina uses the historical and political significance of plants to explore how they relate to her family’s displacement. 

“Sometimes I make an arrangement, then I photograph it, then I print it and I re-photograph another one of the items,” Molina said. “That’s a way to [think] about, ‘how do you layer history?’”

The hanging braid that adorns the corner where Molina’s photographs reside draws inspiration from the braids her mom wove every day for La Virgen de Guadalupe.

“I used to have really short hair, so she used to complete the braids with colorful fabrics,” Molina said. “I talk about this braid being the first time of completing something taken away from me.”

Hanes hopes viewers take a moment to reflect on the exhibit. Hamilton reflected this through recent United States political events, specifically ICE killings in Minneapolis.

“Moments of a little bit of quiet and a little bit of peace,” Hamilton said. “To reflect on things that are important to us as individuals and how we want to show up for our communities.” 

Ebti said she values making people feel that someone can express their struggles in an artistic way. 

“People are going through so much right now,” Ebti said. “When artists are capable of putting or showing what people are going through in art …  so much support happens through that.”

Zarur said the artists and curators plan to talk about the exhibition’s themes on Tuesday, Mar. 10. It stays open through Friday, Mar. 20, on weekdays from noon to 4 p.m.

Images here

Via The Skyline View