A burial flag, a warrior princess, an English saddle and an array of Burro
brand saw horses are just some of the sites on the larger map of graphite and
paper that Iana Quesnell has created for anything to declare? at compactspace
Gallery in LA. Each component in this pains-takingly rendered suite of
drawings and sculpture draws out personal narratives that are embedded within
the represented objects, creating a palimpsest of myth, memory and legend that
traverses familial and national identities.
As an American resident of Tijuana, Mexico, Quesnell knows quite a lot about
traversing borders - she confronts the same tired set of questions every time
she leaves Mexico to teach art in San Diego: Where are you going? What were
you doing in Mexico? Where do you live? Do you have anything to declare? The
show‚s title is an evocation of this crossing rite, but it is also a challenge
to the artist, the art and the audience all at once ˆ interrogating us as to
our own thoughts, feelings and experiences in and around the complicated
landscapes of Manifest Destiny that she so subtly evokes.
Quesnell's work has always had a strong relationship to questions of space and
place - whether she is recreating the barracks she inhabited as an American
soldier in Bosnia or rendering every nook and cranny of her well-worn yoga
mat, her drawings are a love affair with objects and places that have come to
pass. The work she has created specifically for compactspace draws upon and
complicates this former work. She now offers us more than the history of her
own body's passage through time and space - she brings along the whole family
and even the whole nation - implicating us all in journeys including that of
her ancestors New World voyage from Sicily and man's own flight to the moon.
She offers us no less than a handspun version of Baudrillard's System of
Objects, conjuring narratives and histories that reside in everyday items
ranging from heirlooms like crocheted table cloths to public/private documents
such as passports and tourist photos. The genius is the work's ability to
match an impressive skill with poignant subject matter, taking us all the way
from a grandmother's place settings to the final frontier of westward
expansion that still haunts our culture - the pregnant void of Outer Space.
Iana and artist/curator Glenna Jennings will debut several new pieces joining
the collection of the Community In-Sourcing Bureau, an entity working in
collaboration with compactspace for the glorification of kitsch and the
mass-produced object and the support of other small businesses south of Los
Angeles Street.
Iana Quesnell was born in Tampa, Florida in 1969. She earned her BFA from the
University of Tampa in Florida in 1991 and her MFA from the University of
California San Diego in 2008. In 1996, following in the footsteps of both her
parents and three older brothers, Quesnell joined the military (US Army) as a
Satellite Communications Maintainer/Operator. In 1999 she moved to Reno,
Nevada becoming barn manager for a fox hunting ranch before heading south to
San Diego in 2000. Iana has had solo shows and The Museum of Contemporary Art
San Deigo and CECUT, Tijuana. She is the recipient of the 2007 San Diego Art
Prize in the emerging artist category. Quesnell currently resides in Tijuana, Mx.
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