A pair of works by Los Angeles-based artist Bia Gayotto that explore the experiences of first- and second-generation immigrants in Silicon Valley and a student protest movement in Taiwan are now on display at the Don B. Huntley Gallery.
Gayotto’s works, “Somewhere in Between: Silicon Valley” and “Somewhere in Between: Taipei combine video interviews, documentary-style footage, photography and mixed media to examine how identity and culture intersect in places, objects and everyday lives. “Taipei” examines the Sunflower Student Movement, which protested against a trade pact with China. “Silicon Valley” resulted from an open call in which Silicon Valley immigrants were interviewed and filmed engaging in their everyday lives.
The works feature two-screen video installations and accompanying art books. Gayotto will give a lecture about her art on Thursday, March 9, at 4 p.m. in the gallery.
The soundtrack composed by French-born, Taiwan-based artist Yannick Dauby mixes field recordings of Taipei and its surroundings with analogue electronic instruments and digital processing. Following the video’s random structure, the audio is assembled in a flow that overlaps sounds of landscapes, urban space and human activities.
“Place-based video projects enable me to collaborate with a wide array of often unfamiliar groups of people and engage them in my creative process,” Gayotto says. “It’s important for me to interact with the local community and convey a sense of place from an insider’s perspective. This promotes a multifaceted collective experience, which often helps people feel more connected to each other.”
In other projects, Gayotto has used elements in the landscape or urban environments to explore community responses to specific situations or locations, such as commuting spaces in L.A.; mountains and women explorers in Banff, Canada; and the sea and islanders in the Azores, Portugal. Collaborating with members of diverse communities has brought greater complexity to her work, allowing her to map and represent specific places based on social encounters.
“Bia Gayotto: Prequel to 2018” is the third of a sequence of exhibits at the Huntley Gallery highlighting tech-based, installation artists who are scheduled to have larger exhibitions at the W. Keith and Janet Kellogg University Art Gallery in 2018. The series is curated by Michele Cairella Fillmore.
The exhibition runs through April 13 in the Huntley Gallery, University Library, room 4435. For more information, visit facebook.com/thehuntleygallery.