Tradition Interrupted
October – December, 2022
Tradition Interrupted is an international group exhibition that explores the methods used by artists to conflate contemporary ideas with traditional art and craft in a range of media, from rugs and mosaics to metalwork and ceramics. The eleven artists in the exhibition hail from around world.
Curator Carrie Lederer states:
The artists of Tradition Interrupted are merging age-old media and technique with innovation, and re-visioning culturally historic ideas to create new work that interrupt traditional practice but still collaborates with the past. For generations, traditional craft and art practices held steadfast and often visually defined a culture. Today, artists are unraveling certain traits and facets of these ancient customs to redefine or reclaim them for the contemporary world.
For many of the artists in Tradition Interrupted, everyday objects are sources of powerful agency to recall memories in danger of being forgotten, or to call into question revisionist histories. Many of the artists work in a conceptually “uncomfortable”space with the traditions and theories of their past as they create hybrid
artworks that address contemporary concepts and concerns.
Artists: Anila Quayyum Agha (Pakistan), Faig Ahmed (Azerbaijan), Camille Eskell (U.S.), Mounir Fatmi (Morocco), Ana Gómez (Mexico), Shirin Hosseinvand (Iran), Dinh Q. Lê (Vietnam), Steven Young Lee (U.S.), Jaydan Moore (U.S.), Ramekon O’Arwisters (U.S.), Jason Seife (U.S.), and Masami Teraoka (Japan).
Tradition Interrupted was organized by Carrie Lederer, Curator of Exhibitions, Bedford Gallery Lesher Center for the Arts in Walnut Creek, California. www.bedfordgallery.org
Image Credit: Anila Quayyum Agha, Teardrop (After Robert Irwin), 2016, polished stainless steel with mirror finished, halogen lighting, ed. 2/8, 46” diameter; Courtesy of Talley Dunn Gallery, Dallas, TX
Lamont Gallery, Frederick R. Mayer Art Center, Phillips Exeter Academy