AURA
May 13 — July 9, 2022
Curated by Eriko Tsogo and presented in partnership between Denver Film and Union Hall, AURA explores the interdisciplinary territory of art and technology – presenting a mix of traditional and experimental art forms that challenge the possibilities of creative innovation to enlist technology as new modes of valuation and expression in cultural production and critique.
About the Artists + Curator
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Alex Branch
(she/her) is a interdisciplinary artist whose work often requires or implies the involvement of a human body to activate and realize the piece. The objects and installations she makes can be architectural, acoustic, kinetic. A person can be housed inside them, traverse the water in them. They can be worn or flipped through. They can be played or simply looked at but even in the looking, the body is imagined.
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Sam Grabowska
(they/them) is a child of immigrants, a recovering academic, and afraid of the sound of commercial toilets flushing. They work primarily in sculpture, video, and photography to probe how the traumatized body exists in time and space. Their recent work creates micro-architectures by tracing bodily poses. These poses are abstracted and constructed out of industrial building materials (concrete, PVC conduit, etc.) as well as materials that are simultaneously as repulsive as they are engrossing (hair, rubber, etc.). Grabowska holds a BFA in film, BA in architecture, MH in interdisciplinary humanities, and a PhD in architecture with a cognate in cultural anthropology. They are currently an artist-in-residence at Redline Contemporary Art Center and have upcoming exhibitions at the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art and the Denver Art Museum.
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Esther Hernandez
(she/he) is a self taught multidisciplinary artist in Denver, CO. She has become well known for installation and performance where she sets up interactive creative experiences for the viewer. She is a past resident artist at redline and platteforum. Her work was featured by the Denver art museum at untitled in 2019 and arthyve's archives as muse program debut, she was also awarded a Red Bull microgrant in 2020. She has worked with teens at the mca through the “failure lab” program, mentored girls at resilience rising and worked as associate director at platteforum where she managed an international artist residency, youth program and podcast. She offers creative programming to the residents of xdenver where she sustains her studio practice.
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Anna Kaye
(she/her) was born in Detroit, Michigan and now lives in Denver where she works in her studio creating drawings, paintings, videos, and sculptures that are inspired by the natural world. Witnessing the urban decay from de-industrialization as a child enhanced her sense of empathy, compassion, love for diversity and justice, and reverence for the natural world. She earned her B.S. in geology and fine art at Skidmore College, NY. She continued her education at Yale in painting, drawing, printmaking, and photography. She earned her M.F.A. at Washington University in St. Louis where she was awarded the Laura and William Jens Scholarship and a teaching on record position. Anna Kaye’s artwork is a part of international, private, public, corporate, and museum collections including Home & Garden Television’s Green Home. Interviews and reviews include Colorado Matters, Colorado Life Magazine, Westword, and the Denver Post. Kaye donates a percentage of all sales annually to environmental funds. She curates large-scale exhibitions that promote social action and connectivity. Anna Kaye is a former Visiting Assistant Professor and Co-Coordinator of Drawing at Metropolitan State University. She currently teaches at the Denver Art Museum and is represented by the Sandra Phillips Gallery in Denver.
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Christine Nguyen
(she/her) was born and raised in California and currently resides in Aurora, Colorado and also works in Long Beach, California. She is a lover of animals, plants, and nature. She received her B.F.A from California State University, Long Beach and M.F.A from University of California, Irvine. Exhibitions of her work have been shown nationally and internationally. Her works can be found in various collections such as the J.Paul Getty Museum Department of Photographs, Getty Research Institute, Armand Hammer Museum, Grunwald Center for Graphic Art, Los Angeles World Airports Collection, Cedars- Sinai in Los Angeles, CA; Burger Collection, Hong Kong; The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Hanoi, Vietnam; Long Beach Museum of Art, Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum in Long Beach, California; Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, Ohio; and the Microsoft Collection.
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Jodi Stuart
(she/her) was born in 1971 and grew up in a small town on the East Coast of New Zealand. She attained a Bachelor of Visual Arts from Manukau Institute of Technology, Auckland in 1999, and an MFA from Auckland University in 2001. Jodi moved to the United States with her family in 2010 and currently lives in Denver where she is a current resident at the RINO Art Park/Redline Satellite Studios. As well as exhibiting in her home country of New Zealand, Stuart has exhibited in California, Colorado, Michigan, Maryland, Texas and Washington.
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Autumn T. Thomas
(she/her) (b. 1978) is an interdisciplinary artist currently working in wood sculpture. Her work challenges the boundaries of visual literacy by transforming wood into soft, twisting forms, mimicking the endurance required to thrive amidst the oppression and marginalization of women of color. Minimal in design, Thomas' work personifies analogous, brown bodies as whispering forms of subversion, affecting prejudice by way of perception and visual literacy. Thomas is a Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator (DVCAI) 2022 Catalyst Award recipient. She received her MFA in Book Arts and Printmaking from The University of the Arts, Philadelphia in 2017 and her BFA in Visual Communication from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015. She lives and works in Denver, CO.
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Melanie Clemmons
(she/they) is a new media artist interested in reimagining our use of digital technology toward a softer, calmer, and more careful future. She makes videos, net art, installations, 3D printed sculpture, & XR experiences and performances. She explores issues of algorithmic justice and internet culture, the intersection of art, technology, and spirit, and is particularly fascinated by the melding and shifting of physical, digital, and virtual experiences and existences. Clemmons toured with Pussy Riot performing visuals during their first North American tour, and has collaborated on several of their music videos. She is an assistant professor at SMU in Dallas, TX.
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Zak Loyd
(he/him) is a media artist and educator interested in mystical ramifications of video art histories, post-truth culture, and pop-gnosis. His intermodal work takes the form of installation, performance, and network-based compositions. He has shown work at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; Rhizome at The New Museum; the Dallas Museum of Art, among others. He is currently a Visual Art Technician and Adjunct Faculty in New Media Art at the University of North Texas.
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Eriko Tsogo
CURATOR
(she/they) is a Mongolian American multidisciplinary artist, curator and cultural producer based in Denver and Los Angeles. She is the founder of Hilitehead LLC, a fine art and web based curatorial firm. She is an alumni of Denver School of the Arts, having attained her B.F.A (2012) from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Tufts University. Eriko grew up in Budapest, Hungary and immigrated to the United States with her family in 1999.
Eriko has had numerous art exhibitions, curatorial projects and art residencies throughout the United States. She has been the recipient of ACE Foundation Scholarship, “Juuh” Honorarium by the Mongolian Ministry of Education Culture and Science, Alliance for Artist Communities Fellowship, The Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, and Colorado Creative Industries Artist Grant.
Eriko has exhibited at the 2019 “Contemporary Mongolian Art Biennial: Innovating Tradition” in Washington DC, 2018 Superfine Art Fair, 2019 Art Basel Miami Beach, and Saatchi's The Other Art Fair in Brooklyn (2020), Los Angeles (2021) and Chicago (2021). Her animated short film “Tears of the Sky” screened at the 2019 Colorado Dragon Film Festival and the 2021 Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival. Their interactive room installation “Mongovoo” is featured at Meow Wolf Denver. Eriko is represented by Tappan Collective.