By Dirk Langeveld

WESTPORT —  MoCA\CT will open its summer exhibition this week, with three artists offering their takes on how histories and narratives have helped shape the nation.

Looking for History will open on Thursday, June 25th and run through Nov. 15th. An opening reception will take place on Thursday, with a members’ preview from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. and a general reception from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m.

The exhibition features Colossi by Rick Shaefer, The Disappointed Tourist by Ellen Harvey, and Connecticut Industry by Michael Borders. These shows invite visitors to “examine how histories—personal, local, and national—are pictured, preserved, and contested,” and encourage “distinct yet interconnected conversations about the narratives and forces that have shaped the nation.”

“Looking for History is a timely exhibition as our nation’s 250th anniversary presents a moment for celebration, commemoration, and reflection,” said MoCA\CT Executive Director Robin Jaffee Frank, PhD. “By bringing these artists together, we invite visitors to consider the distance between our founding ideals and our current reality—and how the choices we make today will shape the future of our democracy. MoCA\CT offers a contemplative space where we can safely engage with historical memory, the topics of our time, and one another.”

Colossi

Shaefer, whose studio is based in Bridgeport, features drawings that take their inspiration from the Dutch Golden Era of the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as the 19th century traditions of landscape painting in England and the United States. In Colossi, he imagines an enormous structure that gradually comes to encircle the entire globe as nations add their own segments. The wall serves as a symbol of mankind’s ambition, legacy, and contradiction, posing the central question of whether it is serving as a protective barrier or a trap.

The exhibition at MoCA\CT includes the works Water Crossing from Shaefer’s Refugee Trilogy and the series Liberty Dismantled. Shaefer said this is the first time he has been able to display the four large drawings of the Colossi series in a single venue, with enough additional space to showcase other large works and two videos produced with the assistance of local motion graphics designer Andor Mate.

Shaefer said the first drawing in the series, The New Colossus, came out when politicians in the United States were bitterly debating the question of erecting a wall along the border with Mexico. 

“As an artist I had my views but the more I dug into the topic the more complexity raised its head,” he said. “I began investigating Man’s long historical infatuation with wall-building and the larger issue of the myriad barriers we put up in everyday life.”

Shaefer said he has also created multiple works along the theme of human responses to, and repercussions of, volatile population displacements that happen around the world as a result of famine, war, and internal strife. He is interested in continuing to explore this theme, along with humanity’s propensity for building barriers against perceived threats, while also pursuing his interest in depicting landscapes and fauna.

The Disappointed Tourist

Brooklyn-based artist Ellen Harvey relies on audience participation, based around the question, “Is there some place that you would like to visit or revisit that no longer exists?” People from more than 40 countries have contributed information on lost sites, including their name and, when known, the date of their destruction. Harvey then creates monochrome acrylic paintings on wooden panels, resulting in images reminiscent of vintage postcards that evoke both nostalgia and loss.

Harvey said her participatory strategy is a rejection of the idea that the artist is a “special privileged voice.” Instead, she seeks to use art to shed light on lost or forgotten narratives, and to create a community by uniting audiences using the memories of lost places.

“I want my work to seduce people into thinking,” she said. “In this time, when democracy is being actively questioned and where we face increasing environmental degradation, I want to make art that engages as many people as possible and creates spaces for conversation and empathy both for each other and our planet.”

The exhibition is also rooted in personal experiences. Harvey recalled how one of her most vivid memories as a child was the loss of a beautiful water meadow after a farmer bulldozed it. She said she continues to experience this type of loss in adulthood, as the gentrification of her Brooklyn neighborhood eradicates places she was known for decades.

Harvey said that since each person experiences loss differently, The Disappointed Tourist aims to “increase our empathy for other people’s experiences and hopefully to provide an emotional catalyst both for rebuilding and conversation.” She said she also wanted to have some fun with the project, giving people an opportunity to “commission an artwork, just like the original tourists – wealthy people going on the Grand Tour of Europe.”

Connecticut Industry

Colossi will run for the duration of Looking for History, while The Disappointed Tourist will conclude on Aug. 2nd. Borders’ Connecticut Industry will then run from Aug. 13th to Nov. 15th.

A Bloomfield-based artist, Borders will transform MoCA\CT’s entrance gallery into an immersive space highlighted by large-scale paintings. These will depict the “people, places, and labor that have shaped the Hartford region and the state beyond.”

Borders draws inspiration from a variety of sources, ranging from Diego Rivera to the Hudson River School to modern and contemporary artists. MoCA\CT says that in the context of the 250th anniversary of the United States, Connecticut Industry “highlights the industrial, social, and artistic contributions of Connecticut’s communities to the broader American story.”

Programs and events

MoCA\CT has scheduled several events to complement Looking for History. Shaefer will lead a gallery talk on July 9th, and Harvey will hold a community conversation on July 16th. A separate opening reception for Connecticut Industry will take place on Sept. 10th.

For more information on Looking for History and upcoming events, visit mocact.org.