Spirituality

Ann Hamilton’s sensual installations often combine evocative soundtracks with cloth, filmed footage, organic material, and objects such as tables. She is as interested in verbal and written language as she is in the visual, and sees the two as related and interchangeable. In recent work, she has experimented with exchanging one sense organ for another: the mouth and fingers, for example, become like an eye, with the addition of miniature pinhole cameras.

Beryl Korot was born in 1945 in New York City, where she lives and works. She graduated from Queens College in 1967 with a BA in English literature. In her practice, Korot explores how information is encoded and transmitted through systems of lines, grids, and patterns throughout human history. Drawing upon traditions and strategies found in weaving, print media, and video recording, the artist develops artworks that uniquely visualize the intersections of history, language, and technology.

James Turrell was born in 1943 in Los Angeles and currently lives in Flagstaff, Arizona. He received a BA in psychology from Pomona College in 1965 and an MA in art from Claremont Graduate School in 1973. Influenced by his Quaker upbringing, and interested in the relationship between light and space, the artist creates installations and architectural structures that use natural light and artificial color to manipulate the experience of seeing. In doing so, Turrell’s art evokes feelings of transcendence and the sublime, encouraging viewers to practice contemplation, patience, and meditation.

John Feodorov was born in 1960 in Los Angeles, California, and currently lives and works in Seattle, Washington. Feodorov received his BFA in drawing and painting from California State University and his MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College. Brought up in the suburbs of Los Angeles, he spent summers visiting his grandparents on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico. As a child, Feodorov experienced the cultural contradictions between his dual heritages, being of mixed Navajo (Diné) and Euro-American descent. He also observed the stereotypes present in American culture, where Native Americans have been idealized as the living embodiment of spirituality by New Age consumerists. His work addresses this clichéd modern archetype through a humorous interjection of “sacred” items into recognizable consumer products.

Shahzia Sikander specializes in Indian and Persian manuscript painting, a traditional, technique-driven style that Sikander imbued with a personal context and history, blending the Eastern focus on precision and methodology with a Western emphasis on creative, subjective expression. In doing so, Sikander transported manuscript painting into the realm of contemporary art. Expanding the manuscript painting to the wall, Sikander also creates murals and installations, using tissue-paper-like materials that allow for a more free-flowing style. Utilizing performance and various media and formats to investigate issues of border crossing, she seeks to subvert stereotypes of the East and, in particular, the Eastern Pakistani woman.