An Unusable Archive
July 31 - August 28, 2020
St. Louis, MO — Monaco is pleased to present An Unusable Archive, opening Friday, July 31. The exhibition will feature an installation by collaborative duo N/A (Neeraja D and Ahmed Ozsever). The exhibition runs through Friday, August 28. Gallery hours are 12 - 4pm every Saturday.
An Unusable Archive is the most recent installation by collaborative duo N/A (Neeraja D and Ahmed Ozsever). The duo works across continents, Neeraja is based in Bangalore, India, Ahmed in Bloomington, IN and Chicago, IL. Their practice is rooted in conversation and locates subjectivity in linguistic communication, relative to the geographical and physical space one occupies.
An Unusable Archive channels this process through found materials and blurs the distinction between a fictional and an archetypal archive. The artists simultaneously assume the roles of an archivist and interpreter. They compile material and appear to ascertain meaning from remnant documents.
An archive specifically locates history and functions as a memory. It becomes a system of complex relationships if one is able to locate, understand, and interpret the material as part of a larger framework. Works in An Unsusable Archive appear to be whole, complete, and absolute in terms of this vision: to record the evidence. However, in order to be useful, an archive must achieve the status of a catalogue. At the very least, it must be able to function on the principle of some discerning classification. Yet, N/A particularly ask: is it possible to look at found material beyond the randomness of its discovery, and towards its potential as a mutable history?
Hard Copy is a projected video work that retraces a prosaic conversation in the making and the subsequent deterioration of the matrix of the conversation. Line by line they write prose that relates the concepts of codifying archives to that of geographic exceptionalism. The video extends the process of writing and mark-making, causing one to lose track of both the origin and destination of the conversation. It emphasizes the process and gesture of a correspondence-based narrative.
Blue Print/Phrase, Phrasing, Phrased, establishes a relationship between language and architectural space. The imagery indexes used typographic templates. One can see the structure of an alphabetical matrix and the empty spaces that remain as traces of past communication. The piece is printed as a cyanotype–the traditional ‘blueprint’ process, thereby making language into a plan, much like a blueprint is a plan for a physical space.
Unusable Archives are a series of dimensional collages, objects redact and coincide to create a curated record that bares the traces of architectural and anthropological research. They activate the space between materials, the backside of documents, and that which is concealed in when historical remnants coincide.
An archive conjures up notions of objectivity: here is the record, the witness, the evidence of time, motion, action and existence. Yet, it can never escape the limits of its generative impulse: what, why, and whose archive?
N/A is a collaborative artist duo that began as voices over a partition of eight-foot high unfinished drywall. Neeraja D and Ahmed Ozsever occupied adjacent studios which were enclosed and singular–as a single large room divided to create two individual spaces. Their process is rooted in conversation and has transformed along with their relationship. The two artists are now located on separate continents and sustain their projects via correspondence and technology.
N/A’s practice rooted in conversation both as process and subject matter. The duo examines how communication can be ascribed to place. This takes the form of immersive installations where multiple parts function as a whole and as autonomous units. Individual works take the form of video, sound, photography, and sculpture and are seamlessly integrated into the unique features of the space where they are exhibited.
The abbreviation N/A stands for the negation of information. All works are co-authored and the coalesced identity negates the autonomy and authority of the individual. Both artists participate fully in the conceptualization, production, and articulation of the projects.
Ahmed Ozsever is an interdisciplinary artist who works in installation, time-based media, sculpture, and photography. His work is geographically focused. It embraces spatial anomalies, as well as the hidden histories of a given location. Ahmed’s work explores the articulation and perception of constructed temporalities, mediated experiences of land(scape), and the peculiar human traces inscribed in quotidian spaces. Ahmed earned his BFA from Herron School of Art and Design, and received his MFA from Cornell University.
Ahmed’s independent and collaborative works have been exhibited at the HF Johnson Gallery at Carthage College, Gallery19 in Chicago, station923 in Ithaca, NY, and Site109 in New York City, among others. Ahmed’s public artworks have been exhibited at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, Terrain Biennial in Springfield, IL, and the Hapgood-Wright Forest in Concord, MA. He was an ACRE resident in 2017, and was a CORE Artist in Residence at Chicago Art Department in 2018. Ahmed is based in Bloomington, IN, where he is Assistant Professor of Creative Core (foundations) at Indiana Univerisity.
Neeraja D stages installations which perform a narrative structure. Primarily a printmaker, her sculpture and video is informed by silence and noise, and elusive marks and permanent impressions punctuate her compositions. The multiple distinctions and schism between dialect and language have been central to her work. The apparent associations and involuntary disassociations of the spoken word and the very formal structure of a written script enable her to renegotiate the dominant narrative.
Born and raised in Hyderabad, India, Neeraja D holds an MFA from Cornell University, New York, where she received the Charles Baskerville Painting Award. She is currently based in Bangalore, where she teaches at the Srishti Institute of Art, Design and Technology. She was recently Artist-in-Residence at the Mahler-Lewitt studios, Spoleto, Italy, as a recipient of the 2017 Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation Award.