Impossible Violence: A History of Selves

Impossible Violence: A History of Selves explores and challenges the limiting systems of identity and truth that engender turbulent, everyday interactions between self and other. Curated by Joshua David Riegel, an independent curator from Brooklyn, NY, the exhibition displays new works in textiles, sculpture, painting and film by artists Judith Brotman, Josh Faught, Christine LoFaso, and Fraser Taylor. The exhibition presents violence as a physical act, as well as a social phenomenon that structures how we perceive and treat one another. By touching on the acute emotions of pleasure and pain that emerge through intimacies shared between self and other, the works in Impossible Violence delve into the fragile, precarious, and continual space of self-becoming. Through a unique use of materials, each artist confronts the conflict–indeed violence–of histories, peoples, and bodies in contact. The works do not simply replicate such violence, but instead offer reparative ways to circumvent and ultimately undo the rigid categories society imposes upon us. By interrogating everyday occurrences of contestation and loss, Impossible Violence suggests that it is only through a critical examination of ourselves, our interactions with others, and unwilled susceptibility to them, that we can begin to better understand the social constructions that cabin us in, and thus more effectively challenge larger acts of physical violence in the world around us.