The fourteen artists in Me You Us Them are individually distinct – in personal history, in concerns, in background, in representation, and in their material choices. They are the Me, yet the works they have produced for the exhibition telescope through the You Us Them by first offering the viewer an important opportunity to question and understand the human experience (the You). Addressing issues such as identity, perception, education, and technology, each one of the works springs from the artists’ commitment to critical pedagogy. While each artist gives voice and shape to a specific concern of their own, the objects and ephemera included in the exhibition do not rest in personal narrative—each work seeks to engage and unify certain universalities of experience (the We). Most important, these objects are not passive—they ask us each to move beyond our personal concerns and those of our immediate communities, and encourage us to shift our gaze outward to actively locate our experiences in the context of those around us, both known and unknown (the Them).
What is evident in Me You Us Them is an engaged process of inquiry, rather than a didactic or dogmatic point of view. In creating an environment and exhibition that is not only open to discourse but begs for it, these women demonstrate that they are teachers who are artists and artists who are teachers. The relationship is not binary, it is unified.
ME YOU US THEM Catalogue [Link]
More images are available at The Commons Gallery Blog.