ARC Gallery features J.C. Lenochan's installation "Decolonizing the Mind" this May

ARC Gallery features the work of J.C. Lenochan this May. 

Exhibition Dates

May 6, 2013 through May 25, 2012

Artist Reception / Performance

May 4, 2013

4:00 to 7:00

Whiteness for sale 60"X48" Chalk on canvas 2010

Language as culture is the collective memory bank of a people’s experience in history.  Culture is almost indistinguishable from the language that makes possible its genesis, growth, banking, articulation and indeed its transmission from one generation to the next.

Ngugi Wa Thiongo in Decolonizing the Mind 

Inspired by Ngugi Wa Thiongo in Decolonizing the Mind, Lenochan’s performance this May asks tough questions to urban communities - Where is cultural value?  What does the public feel about education as a national pandemic?  How can visual art and literature facilitate a dialogue about public education?  How does sex, race and class stratification bias play a role in policy and curriculum strategies in education? What is the difference between an international thinker and a domesticated one?

This up-coming installation at ARC is part of a year-long performance engaging five major urban communities in open dialogue regarding a crisis facing public education, including issues such as lack of funding and drop out to prison ratio.  The gallery space will be used to create an installation using chalkboards, desks, sculptural objects and recorded quotes.  The entire project will be video documented, complete with interviews from the public, including youth, middle aged and elderly citizens of the larger community and museum patrons, as well a panel discussion.  Lenochan says of this performance,

My work is a collision of critical thoughts and conversations regarding pedagogy in relation to current events.  I am concerned with social condition as it relates to issues of identity, race and class, investigating the psychological impact of misinformation in the public sphere.  The intention is not meant to teach but to share a vigorous perspective, for purposes of dialogue in disrupting normal patterns of thought.  Inspiration derives from a relationship to literature, and the genius that lies half asleep on our corners and in our classrooms or everyday people who may have no interest in visiting a museum.  The work has always been immersed in my experience with materials, objects and contemporary visual media portrayal of otherness confronting cultural bias at its academic front.  Five years ago I made a conscious decision that the transition from classroom to studio, as an adjunct professor and high school art instructor, would be seamless, translating the perceptions of that interaction into my practice. 

J.C. Lenochan

See more of Lenochan's work at http://www.jclenochan.com/.