Open reception: new shows by Abraham O. Oghobase and Laura Moore

Abraham O. Oghobase - Notes to Self: Offerings on History and Memory

Abraham Oghobase investigates the ways that photographic images shape memory and history. The artist’s mixed-media installation Onoriode (Who Knows Tomorrow?) references both his middle name and its translation from the Urhobo language. Exhibited in context with the large-scale print installation Notes to Self, these recent bodies of work are made in response to the tensions inherent to both the personal and historical archive.

Historically, photography was routinely used as a tool to legitimize colonial dominance and reinforce Eurocentric ideology. Oghobase’s reconstruction of images suggests a restorative counternarrative. The artist explores his Nigerian heritage through family photographs and archival imagery culled from the Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University. He explores different image-making methodologies to edit, overlay and reframe these images using analog technologies ranging from photocopying to screen printing. Family photos are enlarged on canvas and paired alongside readymade furniture. Monochromatic silhouettes of figures and flora are printed on Kozuke paper banners alongside agricultural and industrial imagery.

Laura Moore - Handheld

The multidisciplinary artworks in Handheld are rooted in Laura Moore’s fascination with obsolete technology and her commitment to repurposing materials. Having established a reputation for carving 1:1 scale vintage computer monitors and boom boxes out of stone, over the last few years her practice has expanded to include the making of quilts and mosaics. While the penchant for referencing obsolete consumer electronics remains central to her practice, this switch from smooth exteriors to the complexity of internal circuit boards has allowed the artist to expand her material and visual vocabulary. Culled from a personal collection of obsolete technology, she swaps the geometric patterns of the traditional quilt for that of a diagrammatic circuit board from a Nintendo game controller for instance. While the quilts elicit a degree of anxious comfort, the recent mosaics represent a further mash-up of past and present. Based on the guts of her collection of cell phones, each mosaic represents a circuit board enlarged to 1:12 scale suggesting an archeological relic. Thematically, Moore’s work invites us to consider the preponderance and disposability of consumer electronics and the troubling inheritance these artifacts represent for future generations.