■ Tchelet Pearl Weisstub
(b.1984, Jerusalem)
Tchelet Pearl Weisstub, Hawaii - Escaping the Inevitable, 2014 - 2021, Site-specific experience.
Tchelet Pearl Weisstub is primarily interested in critically exploring “vulnerability” as a term associated with the “other,” with increased risk, or with reduced capacity to protect one’s own interests. Rather, she recognizes vulnerability as an ontological condition. Her sculptural installations and performances explore the personal as collective experiences that we share. In Hawaii – Escaping the Inevitable - Seoul, the artist melts the aspects of an aging society in Korea. She creates mechanical apparatuses that imitate the constraints that elderly bodies endure. The young bodies wearing them exemplify how in the inevitable process of aging our effi ciency deteriorates. Thus, the work revolts against social values that are defi ned by productivity and speed. Moreover, with a metaphor of fantasy vacation, Weisstub creates hybrids between young and old, the past and the future, forcing them to inhabit the same space “together.”
Tchelet Pearl Weisstub studied Master of Theater at Das-Arts in Amsterdam. She has participated in residency at Frans Masereel Centrum, Kasterlee (2021), ZHdK Research Academy, Zurich (2019), ACC-Rijksakademie Dialogue and Exchange, Gwangju (2018), and Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (2016-2018). She held a solo exhibition at the Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam (2018) and has performed at various institutions throughout Amsterdam and Jerusalem, including Veem Theater (2021), Arti et Amicitiae (2018), and PAA Jerusalem Theater (2015).
■ Samantha Nye
(b. 1980, Florida)
Samantha Nye, Visual Pleasure/Jukebox Cinema-CALENDAR GIRL (video still), 2016, HD Video, 4' 15".
Samantha Nye’s current body of work includes paintings, videos, and installations that envision fantasy queer histories of age, race, and trans-inclusive lesbian spaces by reimagining elements of pop culture from her mother and grandmother’s generations. In the process of making Visual Pleasure/Jukebox Cinema, she’s assembled a cast of women and non-binary people, including her mother, grandmother, their life-long friends, and elders from the queer community. Her work offers a glimpse into a queer utopia of intergenerational kinship, representing aging bodies that have long been omitted from visual culture and altering the existing gender roles. She imagines the audience tightly gathering around a screen and seeking ways to reinvent the linear history with immersive installations that encourage physical connection and are accessible to all bodies. The title of this series playfully takes its name from Laura Mulvey’s 1973 pivotal feminist film theory essay, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”.
Samantha Nye holds a MFA at Columbia University, New York and BFA at Tufts University, Boston. She recently opened her solo shows in the Candice Madey Gallery, NY (2022) and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2021). Her immersive video installations have been in multiple group shows throughout the Netherlands and the USA. Her solo video installation My Heart’s In A Whirl at the Museum of Fine Arts was written about in The Boston Globe, BOMB Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail and was included in the “Best of 2021” in the Boston Art Review.