December 15, 2013 – June 1, 2014
Taraneh Hemami, Lynn Marie Kirby, Cara Levine, and Ali Naschke-Messing
Thresholds of Faith: Four Entries into the Beyond provided the space for four visual artists of differing faith backgrounds (Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, and Muslim) to investigate the meaning of their spiritual practices and religious backgrounds through art making. The exhibition stretched traditional expectations of clear boundaries between faiths and uncovered significant underlying dynamics in the personal/communal journey that each artist explored.
Manresa Gallery uses contemporary art to highlight diverse expressions of faith. For this exhibition, each artist was provided a space to contemplate and expand spiritual practices through artistic expression and community exchange, creating unique vantage points from which broader platforms for interfaith dialogue could occur.
/////During the exhibition, the artists coordinated a series of programs that contextualized and expanded meaning and interpretations of their work:
Teraneh Hemami Reverberations of Stone
– Performance by Wafaa Yasin, Occupied – Inhabited – by the Same Geometric Form – Shape
– Performance by Omar Miasmar, Reverberations of Stone – Muted
– Performance by Amitis Motevalli, I Speak in Shards and Pebbles
Lynn Marie Kirby
– Skype Sessions with The Sisters of the Holy Cross in Sao Paolo, Brazil
Cara Levine
– Cara Levine and Jennifer Kauffman, The Eye Never Gets Enough of Seeing, The Ear, Never Enough Hearing: Jewish concepts on the end of life
Ali Neschke-Messing
– Full Moon Meditations
– See Through Silence, meditations
Artists’ Biographies:
Iranian artist Taraneh Hemami is a visual artist based in San Francisco, California. Her larger body of work explores the complex cultural politics of exile through personal and collective projects. Her work has been exhibited at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Intersection for the Arts, the Luggage Store (all San Francisco), the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), Beirut Exhibition Center (Lebanon), and the Sharjah Art Museum (Sharjah, United Arab Emirates), among other venues.Her collective projects have been awarded support by California Council for the Humanities, Creative Capital, Center for Cultural Innovation, San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco Foundation,The Christiansen Fund, and Creative Work Fund. Hemami has been an artist in residence at California Institute for Integral Studies, Center for Art and Public Life at CCA, Kala Art Institute, The LAB, and Djerassi Artist Residency. She was awarded a Eureka Fellowship in 2012 and a Visions from the New California award in 2004. She teaches regularly at California College of the Arts.
Lynn Marie Kirby’s work has been widely exhibited in galleries and museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Olympic Museum, Sarajevo; the Pompidou Centre in Paris; Arsenal in Berlin; Manage in St. Petersburg; Portland Museum of Art; the Kennedy Center and the Corcoran Gallery in Washington DC; the Hammer Museum and LACE in Los Angeles, The Berkeley Art Museum and the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley; the Oakland Museum in Oakland; the San Francisco Cinematheque, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the de Young Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and Triple Base Gallery in San Francisco.
Kirby’s films and videos have shown at film festivals around the world including Oberhausen, Toronto, London, San Francisco and Athens. She is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, Djerassi Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, Film Arts Foundation, Jerome Foundation, Kelsey Street Press and The Arts Commission in San Francisco. She is a Professor at the California College of the Arts and teaches in the MFA Program in Fine Arts, the Film program and the Interdisciplinary Program. She studied at l’Ecole des Beaux Arts de Paris, also attending University in France and Sweden before receiving her BFA in sculpture and an MFA in film from the San Francisco Art Institute.
Cara Levine is an artist living and working in Oakland California. She is currently a Graduate Fellow Lecturer in the Sculpture department at California College of the Arts, and an instructor at Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland CA. She is originally from Los Angeles and lives with her dog, Pigeon
Ali Naschke-Messing is a native Californian, currently living in San Francisco. She holds a BA from Sarah Lawrence College, and an MFA from California College of the Arts, with a focus in textiles. She was awarded an Affiliate Artist position at the Headlands Center for the Arts from 2011-203, was selected as an Emerging Artist by the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art in 2012, and was an Irvine Fellow at the Montalvo Arts Center in 2010. She has recently shown at ProArts, Artadia, Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, San Jose Institute for Contemporary Art, Montalvo Arts Center, The Headlands, College of Marin, and San Francisco State University, among others.