C4W:2021 Artist Talk

C4W:2021 Artist Talk Features: Alondra Marisol Garza, Benja Wuest, Katie Robinson, Tchana Pierre & curator Cándida González.

Our guest curator, Cándida González, and Gamut Gallery’s director, Cassie Garner, sit down for a conversation with C4W artists; Alondra M. Garza, Benja Wuest, Katie Robinson & Tchana Pierre to share about their processes, ideations and perspectives on current events. For Cándida, these selected works embody a form of elemental energy that invites us to drop down from the chaos into the essential foundation of existence as life twists & changes around us. These artworks all create roots in the state of being that we return to in order to help us make sense of the confusion.

About C4W:2021 – Elemental
Our annual Call-4-Work exhibition is not a show that influences what art should be. Instead, the chosen guest curator brings their unique perspective and interpretation of the submitted works ranging the full “Gamut” of visual media. Through our guest curator’s lens and perspective, this body of work presented the theme Elemental. The gallery will play host to works that contain the roots of all existing matter – earth, air, water and fire – the essential principles of existence to life, death and human connection.

C4W:2021 ELEMENTAL ARTIST TALK
Wednesday, September 22nd ,7pm
$5 pre-sales ended at 3pm on 9.22.21
$7door day of event,  FREE for members
• Pre-sales have closed
• Entry will be available at the door
• Masks required indoors

Alondra Marisol Garza is a Tejana/Chicana artist. She was born on the Mexican side at the Rio Grande Valley borderlands of Mexico and South Texas. She later became a U.S. citizen, obtaining dual citizenship as a Mexican American, and moved to the U.S. She obtained a BFA at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and recently graduated from the MFA program at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Her work has been exhibited internationally across the U.S., Mexico, and Italy.

Benja Wuest is a Minneapolis based artist working professionally in the field of sculpture and installation. He was trained as a painter and was introduced to three dimensional art forms by studying origami while living in a monastery in Japan. Returning to Minnesota Benja continued his studies at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design with a concentration in print, paper and book making so that he could continue to work with paper and utilize traditional printmaking techniques on his sculptures. While utilizing two dimensional printing techniques for three dimensional artwork, Benja naturally became interested in three dimensional printing. Building his own printer’s and being on the forefront of technology, the subject matter of his work developed around science, technology and the digital.

Katie Robinson (all pronouns) is a student of love, trauma, and transformation. Their academic, poetic, artistic, and community work is curious about and present with individual and collective harm, such that our wounds may be understood outside of a modernist-colonial paradigm. As an abolitionist, they are a servant to transformation that occurs at the levels of the psyche, the nervous system, and the intimate relationship. Katie’s academic work, as a PhD student studying Depth Psychology, with a specialization in Community Psychology, Liberation Psychology, Eco-Psychology and Indigenous Psychologies, has afforded them rigorous exposure to the harms of Western conceptions of mental health, as well as, in turn, a decolonial view of the psyche. They explore these concepts and many more as a co-host of the cute, critical and metaphysical podcast We Are Power Crystals, with Leah Garza and Jaison Perez. Katie lives in Minneapolis with their partner, cat, and dog.

Tchana Pierre Born Leslie Nembo, Cameroon, 1999. The artist uses the alias Tchana Pierre, after the Cameroonian musical legend to alienate Leslie the artist from Leslie the chemist. Tchana Pierre uses art as a medium for storytelling. The artist’s works are inspired by his Christian upbringing in Cameroon, relocation to Nigeria to flee political violence in Cameroon in 2016 and subsequent relocation to the United States in 2017.