Art in Flux: Reclaimed
Launched first 30th March - 30th April 2021
24th June - 4th July 2021 - Kensington and Chelsea Art Week
8th - 13th September 2021 - Ars Electronica Festival

Curated By Olive Gingrich, Aphra Shemza & Maria Almena
​Exhibition Design: Christopher MacInnes
AMINDER VIRDEE | APHRA SHEMZA & STUART BATCHELOR | CAMILLE BAKER | DANIELLE BRATHWAITE-SHIRLEY
ENRIQUE AGUDO | KIMATICA | NATASHA TROTMAN | OLIVE GINGRICH & SHAMA RAHMAN
​RO GREENGRASS & MADDY JAMES
​
​As London’s foremost forum for pioneering media arts, Art in Flux is excited to present our latest virtual exhibition Art in Flux: Reclaimed supported by Arts Council England. Celebrating some of the most radical and innovative media artists of our times, Art in Flux: Reclaimed showcases artists from the underrepresented spectra of society, an eclectic avant-garde of diversity featuring women-in-tech, LGBTQ+ and neurodiverse artists. 

Curated by the three Art in Flux co-founders, Olive Gingrich, Maria Almena and Aphra Shemza, the exhibition features twelve artists from the Art in Flux community; Aminder Virdee, Aphra Shemza & Stuart Batchelor, Camille Baker, Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley, Enrique Agudo, Kimatica, Natasha Trotman, Olive Gingrich & Shama Rahman, and Ro Greengrass & Maddy James. The exhibition provides a virtual space of visibility for diverse voices within the media arts. Globally accessible, this canon of artistic positions, a vista of equal representation and multiplicity, representing eclectic and vibrant diversity across the media arts. 

Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and persisting glaring inequalities they unearthed for BAME communities across cultural institutions, Reclaimed offers an alternative space of creative representation celebrating diversity. With this exhibition, Art in Flux is reclaiming the importance of celebrating different ways of being and creating, including diverse genders, cultural backgrounds, and neuro-diverse ways of creating - to ensure equal representation across the media arts. ​

Artwork & Artist Details

Press


​Press enquiries please contact: info@artinfluxlondon.com
Art in Flux Reclaimed press release.pdf
File Size: 511 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File
As of 2020, disabled people make up to 21% of the UK population (incl. D/deaf, neurodiverse, and people with learning or physical disabilities), but continue to be underrepresented in the Arts (Parliamentary Evidence Report 2020). “Neuro-mnemonic,” 2021 an interactive film work by Natasha Trotman, explores the borderlands between the mainstream and neurodivergent intangible spaces. Combining imagery and poetry, Natasha Trotman explores and illuminates the in-between spaces that neurodivergent people navigating the pandemic sometimes seek refuge within. In Aminder Virdee’s “Lunar Cyborg”, 2021 the artist has utilised her own medical archive of scans and biomedical data to create an audiovisual work as a form of artivism and articulates neurodivergent pain and rituals. 

Across major national and international art institutions and galleries, deficits in representation of women remain, and the media arts are no exception. Art in Flux champions pioneering women in tech, aiming to readjust remaining imbalances, across the media arts. In Camille Baker’s work “INTER/her”, 2021 another kind of internal world is explored but here the artist’s work explores post-reproductive diseases and pain over 40's women experience by creating an intimate and haunting experience for the viewer to understand these issues. 
Despite an increase in LGBTQIA+ representation across Western museums and galleries over the last decade, curatorial focus frequently remains limited to either over-sexualised or erotic content or a focus on the plights of the HIV-pandemic (Schuh 2017). With Reclaimed, the curators present trans, queer and gay artists beyond curatorial stereotyping. 

In Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s interactive artwork “We are here because of those who are not”, 2020 the artist has archived the existence of a group of Black Trans people to highlight their lived experience. The work responds to the identity and choices of those that enter it. In Ro Greengrass’ and Maddy James’ “Down there the seafolk live”, 2020, the artists explore the male Trans experiences in their film about gender transitioning and singing voices. The film offers a subversion of trans narratives exploring the experience of trans masculine performers and their complicated relationships with their voices and stage personas. 

“The Pantheon of queer mythology”, 2020 by Enrique Agudo is an Award-winning virtual reality short film that reveals the stories of four deities personifying some existing issues for Queer folk in Western cities today such as expectations of masculinity and body dysmorphia, internalized misogyny and homophobia, dissonance of gender identities, racial imbalance and discrimination, or the pervasiveness of transphobia from within the Queer community. In Olive Gingrich & Shama Rahman’s ‘Brainfuck’, gender-fluid bodily experiences are abstracted as a continuously changing representation of Flow mental states, measured using A-based classification systems. ‘Brainfuck’ explores sensuality visually as an amorphous, ethereal 3D sculpture.
In addition to the represented artists, the curators present their own practice as a diverse assemblage of themes including British heritage, Arts & Health and Spirituality: In Aphra Shemza & Stuart Batchelor’s “shemza.digital”, 2020/2021 the artists ask the audience to become actively involved in art making as way to decolonise the art world and highlight the work of Aphra Shemza’s grandfather the well known painter Anwar Jalal Shemza. Shemza.digital not only highlights the importance of migrant voices within British Art History it also invites the public into the gallery by exhibiting their work as a way to reclaim the gallery and make art accessible to all.

Kimatica’s art piece ‘Transcendence’ is an interdisciplinary art and research project, exploring how live performance and interactive technologies can induce altered states of consciousness through the creation of contemporary rituals. Kimatica’s “Transcendence VR”, “reclaims” a space within the arts to talk about these transcendental and spiritual ideas to fill a lack with spiritual connection in our society: Transcendence VR  consists of a 360-degree performance of Transcendence as well as a 3D scanned performative sculpture. This VR experience creates a contemporary ritual for accessing the subconscious mind in order to inspire reconnection with deep human emotions and the spiritual world.

Zeitgeist, by Olive Gingrich and Shama Rahman, uses deep learning algorithms to indicate ‘Flow’, turning the artwork into an interface of creative collaboration. Flow is a mental state of increased creative stimulation, reduced stress and increased relaxation. Using AI-based classifications, Zeitgeist represents Flow mental states of the artists, creatively collaborating during the UK national lockdown. Creative engagement can help people to socially connect with one another. Zeitgeist highlights the potential of participatory media arts for  societal transformation, health and wellbeing.
The exhibition is held in a bespoke virtual exhibition environment created by Christopher MacInnes. The gallery space has been inspired by the architecture of a number of key institutions such as the roof of the British Museum. The virtual space has been placed in the centre of Trafalgar square as a way to reclaim this central space within the City of London, for the underrepresented in society and highlight our importance in the building of a new world post Covid. With ‘Reclaimed’ Art in Flux advocates greater visibility for diverse artists across the media arts.

The exhibition launched at the Art in Flux: Reclaimed event in collaboration with National Gallery X on 30th March 2021. (link) With this talk, the curators launched the exhibition and hosted a number of speakers to discuss representation within the art world and how to break to mould and reclaim spaces for underrepresented groups.
info@artinfluxlondon.com 
www.artinfluxlondon.com
​Company No: 13077484
© Art in Flux CIC 2021

    Subscribe to our newsletter