Nadia Hironaka & Matthew Suib: Dark Light
January 21- March 4, 2017
Opening Reception: January 26, 11a.m. - 1 p.m.
Artist Reception: January 27, 6 - 8 p.m.
At the heart of this exhibition is the video piece Writing History with Lightning, a single-screen work composed of various altered and looped scenes from D.W. Griffith’s controversial 1915 film The Birth of a Nation that were projected onto the interior structure of Baltimore’s abandoned Parkway Theatre. The video installation in the Parkway Theater was filmed with a high-definition camera, and the resultant footage set to a soundtrack that is a deeply manipulated version of the original score of The Birth of a Nation. Through this treatment, Hironaka and Suib destabilize and reverse the racist narrative structure of Griffith’s 1915 film, using the methods of collage and appropriation to offer a counter-mythical historical vision.
For the installation at the Cleve Carney Art Gallery the video Writing History with Lightning will be shown alongside a large-scale light installation titled Bright White Light, and several photographic prints.
Based in Philadelphia, Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib have been collaborators since 2008. They are recipients of several honored awards including a 2015 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, Pew Fellowships in the Arts and Fellowships from CFEVA and Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Their work has been widely exhibited both domestically and abroad at venues including, Fondazione MAXXI (Rome), New Media Gallery (Vancouver), The Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), UCLA Hammer Museum, PS1/MoMA, Philadelphia Museum of Art and Arizona State University Art Museum. They have been artists-in-residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts, the Banff Centre, and the Millay Colony for Arts. Matthew Suib is co-founder of Greenhouse Media and Nadia Hironaka serves as a professor and department chair of film and video at the Maryland Institute College of Art. Hironaka & Suib are represented by Locks Gallery.
