As the pandemic slows down, the weather warms up and people start venturing out to art events, south Minneapolis gallery Hair and Nails presents three must-see shows from Minneapolis artists.
Themes of borders, displacement and the effects of colonialism pervade the exhibitions, which offer introspective takes on layered subject matter.
'Fallout Shelter'
In this installation on the basement level, Kelley Meister created an imagined space for surviving nuclear war. Blown-up photos of canned goods line the walls. Gray metal shelves are filled with colorful ceramics, made during community workshops focused on nuclear capitalism and other man-made disasters.
On the back wall, viewers can post a circular sticker onto a "fear scale" map, correlating their level of anxiety around such apocalyptic possibilities as nuclear war, racialized violence and mental/physical breakdown. Meister's work makes visible the invisible, and while many of the topics feel terrifying, the artist also wants people to feel connected and empowered through community engagement. The exhibit also includes three banners: a land acknowledgment, grief acknowledgment and fear acknowledgment, which make the space feel more communal.
Meister became interested in the possibility of nuclear warfare while growing up in the 1980s, when "a healthy fear was instilled in me of nuclear warfare because of the Cold War, and a lot of unsolved problems with all of the waste."
"My family lives in St. Louis and there's radiation from the Manhattan Project — a research and development project during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons — that's been leaking into people's water since the '50s. It's just ever-present, it's everywhere and it's invisible."
'But the Skin of the Earth Is Seamless'
In the main gallery, Kieran Myles-Andrés Tverbakk's solo exhibition is filled with visceral three-dimensional paintings and sculptures. Its title is a quote from Chicana scholar Gloria Anzaldúa's book "Borderlands/La Frontera."
"In a lot of my work I am thinking about those middle spaces, those borderland spaces, being someone who is first-generation Mexican-Norwegian-American nonbinary," said Tverbakk.