Winged Evocations forms new creative mold for AMAM

Promising to transform a small gallery into a shrine dedicated to the hope, peace, and spirit of flight, Albert Chong's installation, Winged Evocations, runs through Commencement Weekend at the Allen Memorial Art Museum (AMAM). The creation went up as a work in progress two months back with a gallery talk, with the final istallation completed in mid-March.

"It's a work about the spirit and its incarnations and desires," said Amy Kurlander, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art since 1850. The work itself is composed of five figures built around a metal armbature with wax molds of the aritst's face. Store-bought suits covered in pine cone petals will be hung on the armbatures, each with a pair of bat-like wings, set into motion by windshield wiper-motors, triggered by motion detectors placed througout the room. On the ground of the exhibit, chicken feathers will encircle the figures.

"It's impossible to see [Chong's] work without being brought in slowly. It has immense cultural and spiritual resonance," said Kurlander. She described Chong's work as "ritual-based dialogue [which] ignites a wide range of metaphors [and] brings together what would be culturally disparate into a single experience."

Because Chong's work deals directly with his mixed Chinese and African ancestry as well as "personal identity and one's position in a larger context," Kurlander believes Chong's installation and visit fit in well with the museum's "commitment to contemporary art but more specifically to artists who are engaging cultural issues that are of great import to a wide range of students and faculty."

"There's something uncanny about how his way of thinking translates into his artwork. He's not representing one-liners. His work is investigative, personal and poetic," said Kurlander.

Kurlander hopes that a wide range of classes and individuals will study and visit the installation Winged Evocations. Chong's installation will spark interest in the community because it deals with questions of ancestry, heritage, self-identity and self-representation.

Chong has had a relationship with the art department through Assistant Professor of Art Johnny Coleman and through previous exhibitions at the Allen Art Museum in both 1984 and 1992. It was during the first group show, Contemporary African American Photographers, that the museum acquired Chong's photograph "Natural Mystic."

Kurlander said she asked Chong if he would consider creating an installation for the Allen Art Museum last Spring after hearing him speak about his work on campus. Chong's visit, sponsored by the Ellen Johnson Fund for Visiting Artists, included an evening campus-wide talk as well as talks in both Coleman's Blues Aesthetic class and Assistant Professor of Art Nanette Yanuzzi Macias' Problems in Installation class. Chong addressed personal art-making issues about "how his [working] process relates to the healing process" as well as about how art can afford "access and entry into other worlds," said Coleman.

When Chong last came to campus, he, Coleman and Prentiss Slaughter, senior Studio Art major, had just finished working on a collaborative performance piece entitled Black Fathers and Sons performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in November, 1996. Coleman said Black Fathers and Sons was about ritual healing and included gathered stories which were performed by Chong, Coleman and Slaughter with the Hittite Empire, an African-American performance company out of Santa Monica, California.

Chong's process is very visible in his work. Kurlander said, "One of the things that strikes me is the way that [his work] reconciles ritual (repeated images, themes, materials) and improvisation. Any given part of the work can prompt a wide range of associations."

"[Chong's] work is fantastically original," said Kurlander. He often uses natural objects, such as pine cones, shells and feathers, as tools and as animated spirits in his work.

In curating the installation, Kurlander said her role was one of facilitator. She decided on the space in which the work would be presented, put together the publication, and has been "creating a critical mass of interest. I want this to be a work people will come to and use both in their curriculum and everyday lives."

Winged Evocations is currently on display in the Allen Memorial Art Museum and may be visited through the remainder of the month. Admission is free.

Etched in wax: Chong's exhibit featuring waxen, winged figures is on display until the end of the month. (photo by Janes Cochran)