DVAA displaying two artists this month

“Epiphanies by Sarah van Ouwerkerk and “Negatives Preserved” by Stephanie Land will be on display through May 8 at the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance.

There was an opening reception on April 2.

In 2014, the artist Elizabeth Swados approached Sarah van Ouwerkerk about collaborating on a book featuring Swados’ writing with van Ouwerkerk’s photographs. As a composer, author and director, Elizabeth had been producing work successfully for many years, from Broadway to La Mama and The Public Theatre, along with authoring many books. They set out to create a story about the life and process of making work, and all that comes in between. The collaborative project began at a time that Swados thought marked a new beginning and believed in the process of producing work to be healthy. Swados’ poems inspired van Ouwerkerk’s photographs. These images and poems were created in the spirit of looking forward, the randomness of day-to-day life, and the fortitude necessary to continue on, regardless of the obstacles. Looking back on it, Van Ouwerkerk says

“I have never loved working on a project more than this and I am grateful to have been given such a gift.” Van Ouwerkerk said.

Through geographic, cultural, political, and intimate investigations that examine white feminism and white supremacy as a history with a continuous, harmful present, Stephanie Land’s exhibition Negatives Preserved, examines how the artist’s own histories intersect with America’s racial histories to determine relationships to land, gender, queerness, family, resource-sharing, and safety. Through mixed media that weaves together sculpture, photography, architecture, mapping, repetition, and the archive, Negatives Preserved investigates beginnings and middles instead of endings to confront individual complicity and the weight of whiteness.