February 2022 / no way to see inside for certain

no way to see inside for certain

Chari Glogovac-Smith, Xiaoyi Gao, Jasmine Fetterman, Sadaf Sadri, Sophia Anderson, Chloe King, quinn mcnichol, and Gerry Sims

February 03 – 26, 2022
Opening Reception / Thursday, February 03, 5–8pm

Winter/Covid-19 Gallery Hours:
Friday–Sunday, 11am–4pm

Waiting, walking, collecting and wondering are ways of evaluating and processing what happens around us and inside of us. Bodies moving through a rapidly-changing world; minds wrapping around life experiences; hearts longing for beautiful, utopian futures: interdisciplinary explorations of eight Seattle-based artists allow glimpses of self-reflections and inner-workings. Veils of light, pattern, structure and sound create protective boundaries: no way to see inside for certain. 

Chari Glogovac-Smith captures latenight reflections with recorded sounds and images. Xiaoyi Gao grasps for ways of staying connected with her mother through collecting videos and text messages. Jasmine Fetterman explores politics of the queer body and its relationship to constructed space through sculpture and video instillation. A digital love spell is the result of Sadaf Sadri’s interest in culture, technology and intersectionality theory. Shoalwater Bay tribal member Sophia Anderson uses painting as a tool to navigate the physical and emotional transition from life on the reservation to life in the city. For Chloe King, the routine of photographing chaotic, intentionally misleading narratives is a way to question race, culture, and queerness. quinn mcnichol’s painted collages are a means of examining their anxieties through visual day-dreaming. Fueled by tremendous love for his children, Gerry Sims makes paintings as a way to push himself further, and asking: how far can I go?

Artist Biographies

Chari Glogovac-Smith is an experimental composer and mixed media artist. Using an evolving mixture of traditional and experimental techniques, Chari is dynamically exploring and illustrating counterpoints between the human experience and society. This exploration takes shape in the form of expansive sound compositions, filmmaking , photography, animation, and data driven art. Chari’s current research centers around concepts of world building, reimagined landscapes, alternative histories, afrofuturism, and sound and body.

Influenced by the rapid urban transitions in China she has experienced since her childhood, Xiaoyi Gao is drawn by the intimacy brought by different subjects that coexist in public and private space. Her work is inspired by everyday life and urban public infrastructure. Gao's visual language introduces the viewers her observation of both private and collective experience hidden in changes brought by social media and technology. Physical motions, carried through her own and others' bodies, appear in several of her pieces, displaying her inspection of intimacy between people. Usually captured in films, performance and installations, narrations of personal memory is also a recurring theme in Gao’s work. She often collects photos, audio recordings, films, text messages or letters to use as her materials.

 Jasmine Fetterman uses a multi-disciplinary and research based approach to explore the complex and fluid nature of identity as a universal concept throughout humanity. As an Eastern European, first generation American, they reference themes of western histories, mythologies, and aesthetics to explore politics of the queer body and its relationship to constructed space. Their desire is to create space to include and normalize queer bodies within film, media, and the art world. Focusing on the necessity of a utopic liminal/transformational space that they have labeled as queer architecture, to also question/critique the role of socio-economic class, gender structures, and hierarchies. They have shown around the West Coast, Pacific Northwest and the Southwest, most recently at the Henry Museum in 2021. They hold an MFA from the 3D4M program at the University of Washington completed in 2021. 

 Sadaf Sadri is an interdisciplinary artist interested in intersectionality theory, queerness, surveillance, and the interaction between cultures and technology. Their practice usually evolves around imagining alternative narratives and modernities through reclamation of traditions and cultures.

 Sophia Anderson is a member of the Shoalwater Bay tribe, and grew up on the reservation, located on a rural corner of the Pacific coast. Her work is inspired by the transition from her traditional land and tribal community to life in the city. Her creative process is how she negotiates the intersections of her changing identity. She holds a Bachelor of Arts from the Evergreen State College, and currently resides in Seattle, Washington.

Chloe King
Routine is everything to me. It holds my work together on the good days. Shoes off, don't sit, only stand so you can dance to the good songs, something hard and violent playing in my ears. All so I can tune out of the world and into the painting. Taking photos is another process altogether, but these days it's hard to even tell them apart. making my work often feels like I’ve found a new crush:That same nervous sweat and butterfly-stomach feeling of anticipating something new and unknown. It’s a slow, sometimes arduous process of researching, writing, sketching, shooting, printing, and painting until the piece has been resolved. 

The desire to exist exclusively in this state of falling in love with creation is tempting. But whiteness has left me grappling with my Blackness, cis men with my gender, and heteronormativity with my queerness. Growing up as a mixed Spanish, Welsh and Liberian womxn – a child of a culturally “white” mother and immigrant Liberian father – in a predominantly white, religious town, I quickly learned all the ways in which I was considered an uncharacterizable “other.” I grapple with these hegemonies using images I’ve found on the internet or made myself (printed paper objects, textiles, painted backdrops) to form chaotic, intentionally misleading images and narratives. All to further complicate and question ideas of race, culture, and queerness.  

 As my hunger for more and more knowledge grows and my hard drive maxes out, I find myself turning towards my ever-growing community for my research. During this time of resistance, sickness, and general collapse, the ways in which we connect are as fascinating as they are anchoring for me. I’m excited by the possibilities within digital arts spaces and how my work has begun to enter into a dialogue with these ideas, due to photography’s often dominant role in social media and online exhibition spaces. My work often makes direct references to digital spaces through both technical processes such as Photoshop as well as iconographically (often taking the form of a fake, painted watermark).

 I’m excited, terrified, and determined to continue learning about the vastness in perception, the circulation of imagery, and identity within my practice while engaging with notions of otherness, pastiche, post internet and my unfortunately politicized body.

My job as the artist is to fall in and out of love with ideas, thoughts, and questions.

My job as a Black artist is to fall in and out of love with ideas, thoughts, and questions.

So, I’ll continue to take my shoes off, play something loud on the speakers and create.

quinn mcnichol
Physical movement and manipulation of materials become a way for me to bridge my daily fears and anxieties with a dreaming, playful mind. As a queer white menstruating human of Irish decent who lives and makes art in a time where our world struggles to dismantle its anger, hatred and self-harm, I imagine art to be a regenerative, healing magic. I listen to folk music that reminds me of my dad, and I read books that recall my mother. News and daydreams and longings for an unattainably perfect future merge with these sounds and words. My medicinal herb garden grows slowly, protected by mugwort and yarrow. Contained inside these parentheses of my life, I make art that wonders how my experiences affect my white/pink body/mind as I move through space to interact with plants and other humans. By embodying the physical and mental actions of making, my body settles, creating space for me to up-root and examine my lived or inherited sensations and experiences. Changing materials into art in turn changes me, generating growth like seeds sprouting, and flowers unfolding.  

Gerry Sims
My work includes drawings, paintings, and installations. As I paint, my intent and purpose for the work is to push myself. I only want to see how far I can go. It’s about the decisions. Good ones and bad ones. The ones we live with and just maybe the boundaries of the work will be pushed far enough to take on a life of its own. Getting out of my comfort zone and trying new things, new materials and different mediums. From turning paint splatters into landscapes, portraits and figures. I want to explore all those ideas to the fullest. Materials include; soft pastels, watercolors, charcoals, oil paint, and gouache. I live by the motto “Anything Is Possible”. My children are my biggest motivation and the reason I create.