SINKING UPWARD, HEAVEN TO THE GROUND

A photo of a bedroom with a bed, dresser adn a large mirror. IN the mirror we can see the destroyed corner of the bedroom. — Maen Hammad, Area D documents the enactments of defragmentation by Palestinians and their joint fight for liberation against Israel’s settler-colonial rule.

December 5, 2024 – January 17, 2025

Opening Reception Thursday December 5, 2025, 6-8pm Event December 12, 11am-1:45

Jose de Jesus Rodriguez, Lorraine Currelley, Maen Hammad, Rabab Tantawy, Rina Banerjee, S Emsaki, Selah Payne, Simon Benjamin, Stevia Ndoe, Tomie Arai, Tommy Kha, Yamini Nayar

The land we stand on is a burial ground, bound up in violence. In a world built upon the backs of black and brown bodies, our birth, love, and loss have become the land. Persistent forced removal from homelands is a chasm of the deepest wound but out of necessity for survival, worlds are built and then rebuilt again. For many, making and reinventing physical space becomes a way to make sense of colonial violence. In the face of dispossession and displacement, marginalized communities have continuously reclaimed and reimagined what it means to place all that is misplaced. Sinking Upwards, Heaven to the Ground brings together multidisciplinary artists whose work grapples with the themes of struggle and liberation, archive and memory, invisibility, improvisational creation, and art making as a way to make sense and confront violence and displacement.

Collectively Curated by Fer Alvarez, Julie Benatar, Ava Bussmann, Daniel Chronopoulos Paula Contreras, Iris Erwin, Lucy Harmon, Lauren Holtz, Judicia, Lee, Rebecca Lipsitch, Julia Meyers, Selah Payne, Valerie, Rodriguez-Castro, Juanita Sierra, Sahana Srinivasan, Tamara Tesfai

This exhibition is curated collectively by students in the course Collective Curating, taught by Keith Miller.