prompt is an experiment.
prompt is a set of parameters, from artist to artist, that are catalysts for inspiration, creativity, and change.
prompt is a pop-up residency + exhibition.
McColl Center for Art + Innovation presents prompt, an exhibition of new installations by Alumni Artists-in-Residence Quisqueya Henríquez (2011), Susan Lee-Chun (2011), and Willie Little (1999). The artists were charged with creating an installation within a period of four weeks, sparked by three prompts set forth by Alumnus Artist-in-Residence Shaun Cassidy. They are:
1. Create an artwork that uses the following pairs of words as the catalyst: divisions and differences; connections and intersections.
2. The work must include one material, technique, process, or approach that is new to you.
3. The work must have an interactive element to it in which the viewer can move a part or parts around to create different relationships, narratives, or ideas.
Each artist interprets and integrates these prompts and parameters into their installation as they so choose. Each installation is an opportunity for the artist to address challenges and constraints through their practice. The process pushes both the artist and McColl Center beyond existing capacity and expectations, and provides a new platform for creative inquiry. The result is a gallery of inspired work by three very different artists, yet connected in many ways.
Quisqueya Henríquez provokes conventions of race, ethnicity, and gender encountered in Caribbean and Latin cultures and practiced universally. Working across collage, print, video, installation, and sound, Henriquez connaturalizes stereotypes originating in corporeal notions of beauty and athleticism and expanding to manifest destinies perpetuated by contemporary ideals of cognitive ability, economic achievement, political power, and art history. Henriquez was born in Havana, Cuba and lives and works in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Susan Lee-Chun is founder, investor, employee, and infrastructure of the Suz, a faux-corporation managing three distinct egos. The essence of the Suz—assimilation, independence, and mediation—form the trident of otherness that Lee-Chun addresses in her self-referential examination of race and identity politics. Like classical Greek theater, the Suz mask familiar instances of personal and group agendas including home exercise videos, tea ceremonies, and the act of seeing. Lee-Chun’s elaborate performances, their artifacts, and multi-media documentation present an acute lexicon of anthropological franchising as it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish from the assumption of dominant Americana. Lee-Chun was born in Seoul, Korea, and lives and works in Miami.
Willie Little’s work celebrates his rural North Carolina upbringing while documenting a fading part of the American landscape. His assemblage and installation pieces are layered with humor, irony, complexity, and contradiction. They speak with an unabashed honesty that engulf environments with a surreal sense of reality as they critique portions of America’s social dilemmas. His work invites us to open our minds and hearts to seek unexpected truths.
Image: Quisqueya Henríquez, Secret Possibilities, 2016. Acrylic paint on cotton padding, installation view. Courtesy of McColl Center.