News Item
Press Release: Pace University Presents a Solo Exhibition by Brooklyn Artist Tamar Ettun
Orange Inflatable, parachute fabric, thread, Velcro, inflator, 20’ x 20’ x 17’, 2018
photo by Josh Hawkins, courtesy the Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, UNLV
New York (October 23, 2019)—The Art Gallery at Pace University is presenting “Jubilation Inflation,” a solo exhibition by Tamar Ettun curated by Sarah Cunningham, Pace’s gallery director. The exhibition unifies different areas of Ettun’s practice in a nuanced examination of trauma, healing, and somatic empathy. Consistent with the artist’s commitment to movement and collaboration as a means to combat isolation and trauma, “Jubilation Inflation” is a creative evolution of a previous exhibit curated by Alisha Kerlin at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. It includes videos, photography, and sculpture, and features Ettun’s inflatable room-sized environments, which visitors enter to become enveloped by vivid color.
Ettun engages with the constant existential tension between pain and joy in her artistic practice, drawing upon her upbringing in Israel, where she witnessed the numbing impact of institutional brutality when she was conscripted into a military parachute regiment. Repurposing the parachute, a tool of war, to create spaces of healing typifies the complexity embedded in her artistic practice.
“For my first project at Pace, I am thrilled to be working with Tamar. Her interactive exhibit uniquely explores the transformative effect of empathy, particularly somatic empathy,” says Cunningham.
Ettun’s immersive environments are in constant change through blowing air, billowing fabric, and visitor play. In 2013, Ettun formed The Moving Company, an artist collective to research movement as an expression of empathetic presence in space and community. Now operating independently and comprised of Rebecca Pristoop, Laura Bernstein, Tina Wang, Annabel Paran, and Scynge Yunxin Xing, the collective performed their new piece, “Whose Is A Place” at the reception. They will collaborate with Pace students to create a new work to be presented after Ettun’s artist talk on November 12 at 12:15 p.m.
The exhibit features three sets of videos. First are Ettun’s own works, one of which reclaims the meaning of the parachute by inverting its motion from dropping to flying back up into the sky, undoing the trauma. Second is video documentation of past The Moving Company performances engaging with Ettun’s massive inflatable objects. Third is a video program of colorful, feminist, and poetic works selected by the artist which includes works by Lorena Barrera Enciso, Alika Cooper, Cheryl Donegan, Trulee Hall, Joan Jonas, Analia Segal, and Jen Liu.
The exhibit also debuts “Sound Hammock,” an interactive multi-channel sound installation that is a hammock woven of cable wire and ten speakers placed in the Kabbalistic spherot diagram featuring a soundtrack by Helado Negro. Ettun’s work will be on view from October 14 to November 26, 2019.
About the Artist
Tamar Ettun (b.1982, Jerusalem) is a Brooklyn-based sculptor, performance artist, and educator. She has exhibited and performed at many venues including Pioneer Works, The Barrick Museum UNLV, Art Omi Sculpture Garden, The Watermill Center, e-flux, Sculpture Center, Knockdown Center, Madison Square Park, Bryant Park, Socrates Sculpture Park, Indianapolis Museum of Art, The Jewish Museum, Uppsala Art Museum, Fridman Gallery, Braverman Gallery, Herzelia Biennial, PERFORMA 09, 11 and 13, among others. Additionally, Ettun has received awards and fellowships from The Pollock Krasner Foundation, Franklin Furnace, MacDowell Fellowship, Marble House Project, RECESS, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Art Production Fund and Iaspis, Swedish Arts Grants Committee. She currently teaches at Columbia University’s School of the Arts, Lehman College, and Parsons School of Design at The New School. She received her MFA from Yale University in 2010.
About Dyson College of Arts and Sciences
Pace University’s liberal arts college, Dyson College, offers more than 50 programs, spanning the arts and humanities, natural sciences, social sciences, and pre-professional programs (including pre-medicine, pre-veterinary, and pre-law), as well as many courses that fulfill core curriculum requirements. The College offers access to numerous opportunities for internships, cooperative education and other hands-on learning experiences that complement in-class learning in preparing graduates for career and graduate/professional education choices. www.pace.edu/dyson.
About Pace University
Pace University has a proud history of preparing its diverse student body for a lifetime of professional success as a result of its unique program that combines rigorous academics and real-world experiences. Pace is ranked the #1 private, four-year college in the nation for upward economic mobility by Harvard University’s Opportunity Insights, evidence of the transformative education the University provides.
From its beginnings as an accounting school in 1906, Pace has grown to three campuses, enrolling 13,000 students in bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral programs in more than 150 majors and programs, across a range of disciplines: arts, sciences, business, health care, technology, law, education, and more. The university also has one of the most competitive performing arts programs in the country. Pace has a signature, newly renovated campus in New York City, located in the heart of vibrant Lower Manhattan, next to Wall Street and City Hall, and two campuses in Westchester County, New York: a 200-acre picturesque Pleasantville Campus and a Law School in White Plains. www.pace.edu
Exhibition Details:
Tamar Ettun: “Jubilation Inflation” on view October 14-November 26, 2019
Artist Talk: Tuesday, November 12, 12:15pm
Gallery Hours:
Tuesday-Saturday, 12p.m.-4p.m., and by appointment.
Contact: Sarah Cunningham, Art Gallery Director, scunningham@pace.edu, (212) 346-1733
All exhibitions and gallery events are free and open to the public
