Familial Frontiers

Curated by Tom Koren

Artists: Corinne Kitzis, Helia Chitsazan, Ira Eduardovna, Maria Mavropoulou, Shasha Dothan

February 21 - February 28, 2024

CP Projects Space at the School of Visual Arts is pleased to present Familial Frontiers, curated by MA Curatorial Practice student Tom Koren. Taking the notion of the classic family portrait and myths of the ideal home as its starting point, this exhibition aims to explore how domestic dynamics are shaped by overarching social, political, and historical realities, and to what extent these conflicted contexts can be revealed through family archives and self-documentation. The works exhibited complicate traditional forms of the family portrait by bringing these issues to the forefront, creating alternative portraits that are turned inside out, in an attempt to reveal what is often concealed.

Helia Chitsazan’s paintings and video installation focus on the familial gaze as an indicator of alienation within togetherness, while also exploring the domestic sphere as a veil of protection from contested political realities. Ira Eduardovna’s video metaphorically emphasizes the destabilizing effects immigration can have on the fragile infrastructure of the family home. Shasha Dothan uses autobiographical videos as self-reflexive interrogations of national identity as it is crafted and passed down through ancestral lineages and inherited traumas. Maria Mavropoulou’s digital images reveal how technology can infiltrate and disturb domestic intimacies but can also be used as a tool for reimagining lost family archives. The opening reception will feature a special screening of Corinne Kitzis’ short documentary My Mother and I, which touches the exposed nerve of mother-daughter tensions by confronting them from a gendered, inter-generational perspective and laying them bare with heart-wrenching honesty.

As a practice made up of both universal and highly particular qualities, this glimpse into various depictions of disrupted domesticities invites viewers to think about the ways their own familial structures are informed by external circumstances, and how this is manifested (or obscured) in their family self-representations.