Bennington College large black text
A wall is filled with a grid of posters hanging closely together; copies of 10 different posters are repeated to cover the wall

Bring It Home

Past Exhibitions
March 2-May 5, 2021 (and ongoing)

#bringithomeshow

Featuring BIPOC artists and designers engaged with issues of equity and identity, Bring It Home uses gift-economy strategies to enlist viewers as collaborators and expand territory for diversity. From March 2 through May 5, Risograph-printed posters by ten exhibition participants were distributed free to audiences—via in-person pick up and the postal service—with the invitation to install the show themselves in private or public spaces. The project responds to shifting perspectives on art production and display, foregrounds representation of voices that have not traditionally been given space, and centers on public engagement at the nexus of the Covid era and the national conversation on social justice. The exhibition title refers to people reinventing ideas of “home” during the pandemic, as well as artists claiming and disrupting visual languages with personal meaning.

Bring It Home embraces and investigates the currency of the poster, a public and immediate surface for artists, designers and communities to disseminate information, ideas and beliefs. An essential platform during seminal points in the history of social movements, the poster recently has played a critical role in conversations about race, gender, culture and equity. In light of this history, this expansive show reimagines poster-exhibition models with collaborative methods—in line with the practices of participating artists—to transcend institutional walls and engage audiences beyond usual art centers.

The exhibition also is designed to transcend traditional exhibition timeframes. For two months, Usdan Gallery displayed Bring It Home artworks on a large wall, and the posters were stacked on a gallery table for Bennington College community members to stop by and pick the show. Today, Bring It Home continues via its catalog—printed in the style of a newspaper tabloid and available as a PDF—which documents the exhibition while allowing it to continue to grow by redistributing the posters in a new format. Recipients can keep this catalog intact or, as they choose, make space for and display the artworks at home. We encourage people to document the exhibition as they install or encounter it and to share images via social media.

Bring it Home is ongoing. It exists primarily in spaces determined by individuals who hang up poster artworks—and these personal installations can continue as long as people want.

 

 

Works by Pouya Ahmadi, Hazel Mandujano and Juan Capistran, Cole Lu, visual arts faculty member Mary Lum, Helina Metaferia, Silas Munro, Adriana Monsalve and Homie House Press, Rin Kim Ni, Ramon Tejada, and Kelly Walters.

Curated by Ramon Tejada, MFA ’03, and Anne Thompson, Director and Curator of the Suzanne Lemberg Usdan Gallery and visual arts faculty at Bennington College. Ramon is a (New Yorkino / American) designer (as Estudio Ramon) and educator based in Providence, RI. He works in a hybrid design/teaching practice focusing on collaboration, inclusion, unearthing and the responsible expansion of design, a practice he has named “puncturing,” and is an Assistant Professor in the Graphic Design Department at RISD.