COVID-19
The artificial construct known as a border gets its artistic comeuppance in this incisive three-artist exhibition, curated by Marc Lepson and hosted online at Miyako Yoshinaga Gallery. Enormous collages by Joyce Kozloff cut up maps into brilliant quilt-like patterns that dismantle the ghettos of Gaza and the historic Pale of Settlement. Severe black-and-white gouaches by Conor McGrady present sublime mountain landscapes as settings whose natural features lend themselves to barrier making. Jenny Polak fights unjust confinement in whatever form is most apposite: lovely ultramarine blue porcelain tiles for your kitchen wall with a relief of The Wall (take your pick: Palestine, Berlin, random U.S. prison); tender brown ink drawings of migrants crossing the Mediterranean in boats; and a speakers’ podium on wheels, which she and a collaborator pulled from Chicago to Gary, Indiana, making space along the way for anti-incarceration voices to be seen and heard.
—Lori Waxman 2020-12-07 10:22 AM