Visual Arts Center of New Jersey To Open Fall Exhibitions Focusing on Themes of Dislocation and Migration

This fall, the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey (VACNJ) will present exhibitions of work from Elana Herzog, Sandra Eula Lee, Samantha Batra Mehta, and Jeffrey Gibson. The works presented explore themes of dislocation and migration through the use of repurposed everyday and found materials. All four exhibitions will be on view from September 29, 2023, to February 4, 2024.

In the Art Center's Main Gallery, Elana Herzog: Ripped, Tangled, and Frayed will feature stunning mixed textile works ranging from raw and threadbare fabric vestiges to plush floral piecework embellished with embroidery and applique. Since 1997, the artist has been fascinated by vintage chenille, which she rips, sews, staples, suspends, and occasionally adorns with beadwork. Exhibition highlights include her signature stapled works, which involved deconstructing and embedding textiles seamlessly into the gallery walls. Herzog also showcases recent large-scale wall pieces, a new direction in sewing, combining, and accumulating different fabrics sourced from her extensive travels. Finally, a site-specific floor installation, Felled, features cut logs incised with fabric extending from the Main Gallery to the building’s exterior. Through artworks spanning from 1995 to the present, this exhibition reflects the breadth and depth of Herzog’s innovative engagement with textiles. This exhibition also features a commissioned broadside that Herzog co-created with master papermaker Mina Takahashi and poet Brenda Coultas. Limited edition prints of the broadside will be available for purchase following the opening of the exhibition. The Art Center will also release a related scholarly publication that examines the artist’s work in relationship to contemporary art, the history of textiles, and craft traditions. Contributors include Eva Díaz, Nancy Princenthal, and Jenni Sorkin.

In the Mitzi & Warren Eisenberg Gallery, mixed-media artist Samanta Batra Mehta will present Search for the Empyrean, a collection of her recent work which includes altered vintage books, radios, globes, and works on paper. The title of this exhibition translates to “of or relating to heaven or the sky,” and is drawn from Mehta’s digital prints—Redux II Search for the Empyrean #1 and #2—which combine cosmological and astrological imagery. Mehta’s work often explores themes of identity, dislocation, migration, gender constructs, and colonization, and she is drawn to vintage objects, antiquarian maps, and found photographs that she alters to construct a reimagined history. In the works presented at the Art Center, she finds inspiration in history, mythology, medieval illustration, and nature.

In the Marité & Joe Robinson Strolling Gallery I, VACNJ will feature Sandra Eula Lee: The Walking Mountain. Lee is a multidisciplinary artist who alters ordinary and found objects to explore notions of permanence. This exhibition showcases selections from The Walking Mountain series, which primarily consists of more than 80 drawings created since 2014. Lee’s varied compositions feature meticulous mounds of rocks, outlines of rock formations, and geometric shapes with radiating lines. Lee was inspired to create these drawings after encountering piles of stones in the mountains of South Korea while she was living in Seoul. This expansive collection of drawings is a reflection on the interconnectedness of human experience and geological shifts. By juxtaposing subtle landscape transformations with rapid urban development, Lee reveals the relative nature of the passage of time.

The Stair-gazing Gallery features Jeffrey Gibson: SHE KNOWS OTHER WORLDS on loan from the Forge Project, which oversees a collection of contemporary art with an emphasis on the work of living Indigenous artists. The first Indigenous artist selected for a solo show at the 2024 Venice Biennale, Gibson is a multi-media artist whose practice ranges from painting and sculpture to installation and performance. SHE KNOWS OTHER WORLDS is a mixed-media artwork incorporating acrylic painting, glass beads, and artificial sinew inset into a custom frame. In his painting practice, Gibson draws affinities between the designs, colors, and materials present in Indigenous art and Modernist abstraction. Through its bold colors, rhythmic visual effects, and powerful message, SHE KNOWS OTHER WORLDS conveys hopefulness and wisdom for shaping the future.