The Traveling Canvas curated by jill moniz and Cynthia Penna
Painting, as an act and product, is one of the oldest recorded art forms, yet as a practice bridges the past to the present, holding limitless possibility as ritual, exercise and expression. The practice and the object map the history of the medium, and in many cases the identity of the maker, all of which becomes subject to the locationality of the viewer.
An encounter with a painting is a cartographic experience, where the work holds layers of meaning and material that resonate with the viewer’s own intelligences and reference diverse spaces and places in memory and time. As curators, we are interested in those intersections of memory, between the canvas and the paint, the artists and the practice, and finally, between the work and the viewer.
We are interested in showing the many possibilities that art creates to bring people into a collaborative experience, conjoining their own personal cultural expression and intentions with those of another person. The collaboration, the feelings, the emotions are shared between artists who worked together, some who have never met each other. Connecting cultures, beliefs and thoughts together creates new visual languages and tools to engage in broader critical discourses of equality, justice and community.
The Traveling Canvas is an innovative project that encourages artists to incorporate the layers and intricacies of paint and memory into works of intense personal and popular meaning. The canvases have not only circled the globe - each sent to the locations of artists around the world - but they map each painter’s ideas and hopes for the medium, as well as expose certain aspects of cultural perceptions that can influence and effect the other artists and the audience. In keeping with the inherent theme of charting manifold meanings, the exhibition of these works highlights the trajectory of each canvas. Our hope is that this project will illuminate how we as humans create, communicate and remember.
