We are honored to inaugurate the newly constructed NXTVHN gallery with Countermythologies, an intimate yet far-reaching exhibition curated by 2019 Curatorial Fellows Zalika Azim, Riham Majeed, and Ana Tuazon. With the support of their Curatorial Advisors, Kalia Brooks Nelson and Keely Orgeman, the Fellows built a conceptual framework that is deeply relevant to our community of Dixwell where these works will find a home through the spring of this year.
In their first major exhibition as emerging curators, Zalika, Ana and Riham were fearless as they performed the subversive work of mining historical archives to theorize a more radical future, one where we hold less dear to the fictions that divide rather than unite us. Theirs was a boldly precarious position—looking back to look forward—which embodies they very spirit of mentorship and intergenerational collaboration upon which NXTHVN is built. I’m proud to steward an organization where our future leaders of tomorrow demonstrate such tangible reverence for history and its contemporary legacies, in both their theoretical approach and their professional practice.
The exhibition’s focus on archival memory, oral history, and ancestral inheritances as tools of power and spiritual transcendence for communities of color is particularly urgent during this precarious moment of heightened cultural erasure. (One needn’t look too far for evidence that our social institutions—like the Monterey jazz club and the Q House community center to name a few—are at risk of being forever unmoored from the landscapes of both our built environment and collective imagination.) Countermythologies—a moral compass and spiritual anchor in uncertain times such as ours—confronts us with a choice; to stand idly by as others write our story into history, or to stand up, as the eight artists in this exhibition have stood up, and participate in authoring a more complex and inclusive narrative. Moreover, it asks us to relinquish outdated notions of belonging and cultural propriety, and instead embrace change as a chronology that is cyclical, vast, and enduring.
In Dixwell and neighborhoods like ours—where said change is an inescapable reality experienced daily in the form of gentrification and its attendant mechanisms—Countermythologies is far more than a seasonal art exhibition. Here, it is a call to action. A point of entry into a conversation with someone new, spawned by a work of art that is perhaps all at once familiar and unfamiliar. A reminder to remember those from whom we’ve inherited our stories, our land, our cultural wealth, and our undeniable excellence. A mirror in which to see ourselves reflected as essential stakeholders and collaborators in all that will be created, and find permanent home, here at NXTHVN.
As we near the end of construction on our facility and the launch of our full program later this year, Countermythologies is also an essential punctuation mark in the origin story of this evolving institution—an ellipsis bridging our own past and future, as we strive towards becoming a responsive neighbor and cultural anchor here in Dixwell. NXTHVN always imagined the Gallery to be the primary site where artists, curators, young people, and the local community would come together to discuss the complex intersections of art and our everyday lives. I’m eternally grateful to Zalika, Riham, and Ana for gifting us such a thoughtful and dynamic platform through which to convene, converse, and discover more about ourselves, each other, and this reality that we share.
Nico Wheadon — Executive Director, NXTHVN