|
Indepth Arts News:
"Neighbo(u)rhood"
2011-05-13 until 0000-00-00
Mattress Factory
Pittsburgh, PA,
USA United States of America
The Mattress Factory will open Neighbo(u)rhood, this summers large group exhibition. The exhibition includes events, installations and video-based works, which present differing points of departure and reflections upon the idea of neighborhood today. The participating artists are Glenn Loughran, Ferhat Özgür, Seamus Nolan, Sarah Pierce/The Metropolitan Complex, Diane Samuels, John Smith, Elisabeth Subrin, and Dawn Weleski. Neighbo(u)rhood is the second and final exhibition in a series Georgina Jackson has produced during her two-year curatorial residency with the museum.
During the late nineteenth century, Pittsburgh was a central destination for generations of immigrants who carved out a living working in the steel mills, iron, glass, and other factories along the three famous rivers. The city, often called The City of Immigrants, offered the promise of economic prosperity in the land of the free and the land of opportunity. While this massive influx has not been repeated during the late twentieth or twenty-first centuries, neighborhoods such as Squirrel Hill and Polish Hill acknowledge the historical formations of communities to a site, city or nation according to ethnic, cultural and religious affinities.
Today in Pittsburgh, it is common for people to define their home not by city limits but by neighborhood boundaries. Thus the idea of neighborhood informs a sense of belonging, but an identity beyond that of the cultural, ethnic, religious or social. In this sense neighborhood operates as a space in which there is a juxtaposition of difference but also a potential for alternative forms of community not based on identity but on the common.
Neighbo(u)rhood re-considers the idea of neighborhood here and now, the figure of the neighbor in contrast to the dichotomy of friend/enemy, and a deliberation of how we live together. The title refers to a difference of translation but also an assertion of the role of oneself in the existence of neighborhood. Such relationships whether spatial or defined by community are complex and propose neighborhood as an incomplete project.
Neighbo(u)rhood will reflect upon and open discussion on areas including the neighbor, community, socio-political shifts, immigration and participation. Several of the works have been developed for the exhibition and artists Glenn Loughran, Seamus Nolan, and Sarah Pierce, have, during residencies in Pittsburgh, developed new projects. The projects will be presented both at the Mattress Factory and in different sites in Pittsburgh.
Related Links:
| | 
|
