Nene Humphrey Announces Video Screening and Upcoming Performance

Lesley Heller Workspace is pleased to screen a recent video by Nene Humphrey titled Into the Center, 2012-2015.

Into the Center, 2012-2015 and related works on paper are part of a larger ongoing installation and performance project by the artist titled Circling the Center. The multidisciplinary work began as a private meditation on personal loss and grew into communal art making process with deep and surprising connections between the neuroscience of emotions and the lost 19th century craft of ritualistic, intricate Victorian mourning braiding.

Humphrey's ongoing collaboration with New York University's Joseph LeDoux Neuroscience Lab provides a unique perspective on the neuroscientific process of mourning through an examination of the internal biological workings of the emotional processing part of the brain: the amygdala.

Over the course of this collaboration, Humphrey has made hundreds of drawings of the amygdala aided by imaging from a high-powered microscope. These microscopic slices have an uncanny visual correspondence to the 19th century braid patterns. These drawings were animated and overlaid with aural recordings of human breath, electronic circuitry, and field recordings from the lab itself in this single channel video.

Related work on paper, also employing lab drawings and collage will also be exhibited.

Lesley Heller Workspace Video Gallery will screen Nene Humphrey's Into the Center from September 7 - October 16.

Performances of Circling the Center directed by Obie winner Mallory Catlett, will take place at 3 legged Dog Art and Technology Center on Oct 13, 14, and 15th at8pm, 80 Greenwich Street, NYC 10006 www.3ldnyc.org