April 22 – May 14, 2016

Opening reception: Friday, April 22, 2016, 7:00 – 9:00 PM
Gallery hours: 12:00 – 6:00 PM, Tuesday – Saturday

Over the Wall is a group exhibition about love and other spaces of the imagination within systems and sites of oppression. The artists in Over the Wall reposition hope and imagination within the waiting, liminal spaces shaped by institutionalized racism, surveillance, and state power. At the center of each work is a focus on creating a space for intimacy within a dehumanizing system.

State-sanctioned and social oppression against individual bodies is encountered and negotiated in the work of Omar Mismar, which considers daily life and queer intimacy under the regime in Lebanon. Mirror / Echo / Tilt is a collaborative project by Melanie Crean, Shaun Leonardo, and Sable Elyse Smith, along with others affected by the United States justice system. Their video inserts a speculative narrative into enactments of tableaux of conflict and oppression performed in abandoned prisons and courthouses. Jennifer Moon’s Phoenix Rising is a series of relics and texts describing her experiences being incarcerated in 2008-2009 for attempted robbery and her vision of the world based on love as a political concept.

Over the Wall is presented in parallel with the Open Engagement—2016: POWER conference. As a local partner of the conference, Southern Exposure presents a series of talks, open houses, and exhibitions, as well as launch a new publication. Open Engagement is an annual, three-day, artist-led conference dedicated to expanding the dialogue around and creating a site of care for the field of socially engaged art. The conference runs from April 28 – May 1, 2016 and, in focusing on the theme of power, highlights the ability of socially engaged artists to make desired results happen.

Mirror / Echo / Tilt is a project of Creative Capital.