Commonwealth

OVERVIEW

What do we share in common? Who is the “we” in “We the people”? How could we reimagine wealth and come together for common good?

Commonwealth explores these questions, and how our common resources are used to influence the wealth and well-being of our communities. Commonwealth is the outgrowth of a multiyear partnership between three dynamic, socially engaged contemporary arts organizations: the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University (ICA at VCU) in Richmond, Virginia; Philadelphia Contemporary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Beta-Local in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The project explores the historical concept of “commonwealth” and its legacy in each of the three locations. It asks whether it’s possible to unleash the collective power embedded in that term while recognizing its connection to exploitation and colonialism. The question of how people understand common wealth, and the tension between individual choice and collective wellbeing, has become all the more relevant in 2020, a year that began with earthquakes in Puerto Rico and has continued with the historic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Using the tools of culture — from critical conversation to writing, image-making, performance and even gardening — Commonwealth offers paths to understanding both the unequal structures that shape our lived realities and ways that people might come together to make the world more equitable.

ABOUT COMMONWEALTH

Originally designed to be presented as an exhibition in all three cities, the initiative has since been reconceived to account for limited travel and social distancing restrictions and to maximize digital access. The ICA will now present the sole exhibition of the project, with Beta-Local leading the development of a hybrid print and digital publication, and Philadelphia Contemporary launching grant-funded community partnerships and a billboard by artist Firelei Baez. The three institutions have also worked with the project’s artists to adapt their new works to be responsive to the current moment and to create a hybrid digital/in-person experience.  

The indoor/outdoor exhibition component of the project, opening at the ICA in September, will feature all of the new co-commissioned work by artists Firelei Báez, Carolina Caycedo, Duron Chavis, Alicia Díaz, Sharon Hayes, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Nelson Rivera, Monica Rodriguez, and The Conciliation Project (TCP). In addition, the exhibition includes an existing sculpture that Lukin Linklater created with Tiffany Shaw-Collinge. Working across different media, geographies, and ideas, each of the selected artists is creating new work, which will also be presented in different iterations online and in text, that delves into the notion of the commonwealth—its history and many afterlives, as well as the term’s conceptual possibilities and inherent limitations. Select works include: a “resiliency garden” outside the ICA conceived by food justice activist Duron Chavis and designed by Quilian Riano of DSGN AGNC; Distressed Debt, an installation by Carolina Caycedo that investigates the privatization of natural resources; a filmed performance by indigenous artist Tanya Lukin Linklater that addresses the legacies of settler colonialism; and a performance by the Richmond-based, anti-racist group The Conciliation Project (TCP) that responds to the current moment of racial justice protests. 

The bilingual publication, designed by San Juan-based studio Tiguere Corp, will be released serially over fall 2020 with three issues published both digitally and as limited-run print editions. Inspired in part by the directness and immediacy of newspapers, the publication will highlight both connections and differences across the three cities by mixing hyper-local, current content with broader historical perspectives and artworks. In addition to the publication, the partners will host online Commonwealth-related programming this fall..

Commonwealth is organized and curated by Beta-Local co-directors Pablo Guardiola, Michael Linares, and nibia pastrana santiago and former co-director Sofía Gallisá Muriente; ICA at VCU Chief Curator Stephanie Smith; Noah Simblist, Chair of Painting + Printmaking at VCUarts; and Kerry Bickford, Director of Programs, Nicole Pollard, Program Coordinator and Nato Thompson, Sueyun and Gene Locks Artistic Director at Philadelphia Contemporary.

BLACK SPACE MATTERS

COMMONWEALTH PUBLICATION

The Commonwealth publication is anchored in the spirit of a miniseries, or perhaps a pamphlet series. Three volumes, mainly in digital format, include networks of content linked to the Commonwealth project. Through this content, we approach our contexts, ideas, and feelings (many of these contradictory) in various ways and from multiple latitudes that are at times almost impossible to reconcile. The only possible way to work has led us to unravel the semantic content of the “common good,” “commonwealth,” “common debt,” and other permutations from their mix of meanings. Instead of thinking about the utopia of putting something together, we work from the reality that things break and that it is not bad to operate from the cracks. The broken and the interrupted as a positive value.

This art project is manifested through such various components as an exhibition, editorial content, and public programs. The sections dedicated to participating artists, mainly from the exhibition at the Institute for Contemporary Art at VCU, not only share documentation of the works in the exhibition but are also approaches to the ideas that fueled them.

ISSUE ONE:

This first issue has contributions by three participating artists: Mónica Rodríguez, Sharon Hayes, and Duron Chavis (with Quilian Riano). These provide context, not explanations to their respective Commonwealth projects. There is a journalistic note focusing on Richmond’s Confederate monuments by Brian Palmer. Since the three organizations started to work together a series of working concepts were developed as our orientation tools. Here we present them as a series of icons produced by Lorraine Rodríguez. Also included is a comic strip by Jimena Lloreda.

ISSUE TWO:

Issue Two includes contributions from Firelei Báez, Alicia Díaz with collaborator Patricia Herrera , Nelson Rivera, nibia pastrana santiago, Sojourner Ahebee, Yarimar Bonilla, Mabel Rodríguez Centeno, and Kalela Williams. Political cartoons by Jimena Lloreda, and an interactive conceptual game paired with new illustrations by Lorraine Rodriguez.

ISSUE THREE: 

Issue Three includes contributors Tanya Lukin Linklater and Tiffany Shaw-Collinge, Carolina Caycedo, The Conciliation Project, Ana Edwards, Mabel Rodríguez Centeno, Andrea Paasch, Jahd Khalil, Tawnya Pettiford-Wates, Ram Bhagat, Joel Cintrón Arbasetti, and Silvia Federici. Political cartoons by Jimena Lloreda, and an interactive conceptual game paired with new illustrations by Lorraine Rodriguez.

THE WORLD WE WANT IS US

The World We Want Is Us presents large-scale projections onto the ICA’s facade by artists and Southerners On New Ground (SONG) members Shazza Berhan and Laura Chow Reeve. They co-created a series of visuals that combine text and imagery to envision a new future for Richmond. For instance, one depicts protest as a form of community care; another presents a future in which investments in the public good through health care, housing, education, and the arts leads to safer, happier communities. The artists hope for a time “in which conditions have changed and we no longer have to fight for dignity and basic safety, building on the work of local organizers, activists, and advocates who have been working for justice, reformation and liberation.”

Projections will be visible on the ICA’s exterior each evening, weather permitting. Pedestrians may view from the Belvidere sidewalk or within the Resiliency Garden. Please maintain social distancing.

The World We Want Is Us is a project for Commonwealth, and extends the exhibition’s questions about how our common resources are used to influence the wealth and well-being of our communities. It is presented by the ICA in conjunction with InLight.

About the creative team: 

Shazza Berhan is an artist and VCU alumna who focuses on painting and drawing. She has worked with DC’s ARTECHOUSE and currently supports Operations at the American Art Therapy Association.  Laura Chow Reeve is a writer and illustrator known for her “Radical Roadmaps” series. She won the 2017 PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and is a Senior Editor at Joyland Magazine. Both are members of Southerners on New Ground (SONG), a social movement nonprofit working to “build, sustain, and connect a southern regional base of LBGTQ people in order to transform the region.” Videometry Visuals is a project of Dustin Klein, a lighting designer and technical effects expert known both for his work supporting performing artists and his now-iconic projections onto the base of the Lee Monument in Marcus David Peters Circle in Richmond. The project evolved from SONG VA Statewide Organizer, Rebecca Keel’s role as a facilitator for Summer Sessions: Commonwealth in 2019, a public research and discussion series that considered the larger ideas of Commonwealth in relation to Richmond.

THANKS

The ICA would like to extend heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed their presence, voice, creativity, and care to this project, including:

The Artists

Firelei Báez, Carolina Caycedo, Duron Chavis, Alicia Díaz, Sharon Hayes, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Nelson Rivera, Monica Rodriguez, and The Conciliation Project (TCP). In addition, the exhibition includes an existing sculpture that Lukin Linklater created with Tiffany Shaw-Collinge.

Tiguere Corp

The bilingual publication, designed by San Juan-based studio Tiguere Corp, will be released serially over fall 2020 with three issues published both digitally and as limited-run print editions.

Curatorial

Commonwealth is organized and curated by Beta-Local co-directors Pablo Guardiola, Michael Linares, and nibia pastrana santiago and former co-director Sofía Gallisá Muriente; ICA at VCU Chief Curator Stephanie Smith; Noah Simblist, Chair of Painting + Printmaking at VCUarts; and Kerry Bickford, Director of Programs, Nicole Pollard, Program Coordinator and Nato Thompson, Sueyun and Gene Locks Artistic Director at Philadelphia Contemporary.