Events

The Masur Museum of Art’s Annual Juried Competition showcases contemporary artists throughout the United States of America working in any medium. This long-running juried competition also showcases some of America’s best curatorial talent. Recent jurors include Daniel Stetson, LSU Museum of Art; Gia Hamilton, Joan Mitchell Center; Holly Hughes, Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Sandra Firmin, Colorado University Art Museum; Kelly Shindler, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; George Shackelford, Kimbell Art Museum; Liza Simone, Phantom Galleries, Los Angeles; Alison Greene, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; David Houston, currently Bo Bartlett Center; and Miranda Lash, currently Speed Art Museum.

We are honored to have this year’s juror Joel Parsons.

Parsons is a curator, artist, and teacher based in Memphis, where he is the Director of Clough-Hanson Gallery at Rhodes College and Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Art History. His curatorial practice is often collaborative and driven by a desire to bring institutional resources to bear on conversations of equity and marginality. Recent projects include The Weight of Hope, No Fate But What You Make: Art and Queer Spirituality, Faith Wilding: Fearful Symmetries, and Rashayla Marie Brown: Supreme Being. He is the founder and co-director of Beige, an alternative gallery and performance space devoted to the work of LGBTQ artists. He is the Co-chair of the ArtsMemphis Artist Advisory Council and serves on the board of the UrbanArt Commission. As a Thomas J Watson Fellow in 2007-2008, he studied relational art practices in emerging global art centers. He received an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Participating Artists:
John S. E. Alleyne (LA), David Andree (AR), Elizabeth Arden (PA), Ariel Baldwin (IL), LeeLee Brazeal (TX), Amelia Briggs (TN), Kristen Brown (CA), Jesse Butcher (TN), Susan Chambers (AR), Dean Dablow (LA), Douglas Degges (IL), Michael DeLuca (PA), William Dooley (AL), Leah Drake (SC), Ann Marie Fitzsimmons (NJ), Mark Gordon (NC), Robert Gordon (AR), Gao Hang (TX), William Hays (VT), Joseph Holsapple (LA), Gerard Huber (TX), Jennifer Hunt (SC), Manami Ishimura (TX), Perry Johnson (TN), Kevin Jones (LA), Hannah Kozlowski (WV), Neema Lal (NY), Francine LeClercq (NY), George Lorio (MD), Stacy Medaries (LA), PJ Mills (FL), Charles Mintz (OH), Lacy Mitcham (TN), Daniel Moore (LA), Joshua Newth (MO), Stefan Nodarse (IN), Alan Pocaro (IL), Pam Schmidt (CO), Robert Schwieger (IL), Suzanna Scott (LA), Courtney Sennish (CA), Parker Seward (AL), Ricky Sikes (LA), Juvana Soliven (HI), Corrie Steckelberg (MN), Melissa Wilkinson (AR), Liz Zanca (LA).

Curated by Enrico Mascelloni and Annemarie Sawkins, PhD
Located in Central Asia, landlocked Afghanistan has been a commercial crossroads served by the historically significant and influential Silk Road for over 2,000 years. It is home to mountain ranges and desert areas covering over 250,000 square miles, making it slightly smaller than Texas. A nexus of ideas and trade between East and West, it has been a site of conflict for centuries. Although Afghanistan won its independence from Great Britain in 1919 and was ruled by its own monarch until 1973, lasting peace had been elusive; recent occupiers have included the Soviet Union, the United States, and Taliban forces.

War rugs are unique to Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, to which many weavers fled following foreign invasions and civil war. Some feature maps, portraits of military heroes, monuments, or cityscapes, but most avidly collected examples showcase weaponry and armaments. Machine guns, assault rifles, bombs, mines, tanks, warplanes, and drones figure prominently. Although they are often said to have appeared first after the Soviet invasion in 1979, earlier examples do exist and may express an aspect of the country’s road to modernization. War rugs produced after 1979 derive their imagery from television broadcasts, propaganda posters, and first-hand observation of the reality of daily life in a country under siege.

Rug weaving in Central Asia and the Middle East dates back thousands of years. The process involves knotting individual pieces of colored wool to the warp threads of a loom It can take up to a year to produce a full-sized carpet of a complex rug. The finest examples are made from the wool of Karakul sheep, the oldest known domesticated breed. Designs typically consist of a central field of floral or geometric motifs framed by a decorative border. Until recently, motifs remained largely unchanged for centuries. Major producers of Afghan rugs are the Baluchi, Hazara, Zakini, Taimini, and Turkoman tribes. While weaving has traditionally been considered women’s work, men and children are now recruited out of economic necessity. The nearly 40 war rugs in this exhibition come from a number of distinguished private collections.

Ana Benaroya: Standing Before Evil is a mural installation depicting the battle between good and evil. This installation uses contemporary takes on archetypal imagery to convey a clear sense of Benaroya’s characters’ moral bearing. Ultimately, her work reveals the subjective nature of good and evil by the use of a common color palette and ambiguous facial expressions in her work. Complex and playful, Standing Before Evil uses bold imagery to create an empathic, contemplative space in the Masur Museum of Art’s Lower North Gallery.

Benaroya is the author and illustrator of 120 Ways to Annoy Your Mother (And Influence People). Her design clients include Lincoln Center, The New Yorker, Marc Ecko, WILCO, and ABC’s World News Tonight. Her work was exhibited most recently at Rabbithole Projects, Brooklyn, NY; FISK Gallery, Portland, OR; and Nooworks, San Francisco, CA. During the last several years she was an artist in residence at Newark Print Shop, NJ, and Light Grey Art Lab, Iceland. Benaroya will complete her MFA in Painting at Yale University in 2019.