ART IN THE PLAGUE YEAR

UCR ARTS: California Museum of Photography

“There is another world, but it is in this one,” said Surrealist poet Paul Éluard. In this exhibition, artists look to the future, imagining how we move forward from the tumultuous events of the past year. [read more]

BODY
  1. Sapira Cheuk
  2. Mikael Owunna
  3. Jill Miller
  4. Katrina Lillian Sorrentino
  5. Bootsy Holler
  6. Baldomero Robles Menendez 
  7. Kate Warren
  8. Stefano Morrone

NATURE
  1. Kiliii Yüyan
  2. Amy Regalia
  3. John Divola
  4. Jean-Baptiste Maitre
  5. Julia Schlosser
  6. Gaby Lobato

ABSENCE
  1. Sara Jane Boyers
  2. Jody Zellen
  3. Evy Jokhova
  4. Ines Oliveira e Silva
  5. Ens/centrado Collective and Gabriela Elena Suárez
  6. Lewis deSoto

PRESENCE
  1. Evelyn Corte Espinosa
  2. Fernando Velazquez
  3. Qianwen Hu
  4. Lilli Waters
  5. Gionatan Tecle
  6. Karl Baden

RITUAL
  1. Ben Grosser
  2. United Catalysts (Kim Garrison and Steve Radosevich)
  3. Darryl Curran
  4. Deanne Sokolin
  5. Sandra Klein
  6. Wayne Swanson

ENCOUNTERS
  1. Tyler Stallings
  2. Molly Peters
  3. João Ferro Martins
  4. Tony Fouhse
  5. Mark Indig

DYSTOPIA
  1. Peter Wu+/EPOCH Gallery
  2. Jeff Frost
  3. Sara & André
  4. Andrew K. Thompson
  5. Lois Notebaart
  6. Nadezda Nikolova-Kratzer
  7. Caity Fares
  8. Karen Constine
  9. Aaron Giesel
  10. Bill Green

JUSTICE
  1. antoine williams
  2. Stephanie Syjuco, Jason Lazarus, and Siebren Versteeg
  3. Mark Holley
  4. Cambria Kelley
  5. Sheila Pinkel
  6. Sergio Ximenez
  7. Karchi Perlmann
  8. Simon Penny and Evan Stanfield

ABOUT


Art in the Plague Year is an online exhibition organized by UCR ARTS: California Museum of Photography and curated by Douglas McCulloh, Nikolay Maslov, and Rita Sobreiro Souther. UCR ARTS’s programs are supported by UCR College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, the City of Riverside, Altura Credit Union, and Anheuser-Busch.
All works in this exhibition are reproduced with permission of the artists/copyright holders. Works (images, video, audio or other content) must not be used or reproduced for any purposes other than fair use without prior consent of the artists.
© UC Regents 2020
Mark

João Ferro Martins

(b. 1979, Santarém, Portugal. Lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal)



fatto di sottile sfumatura di rumore [made of the quietest shade of loud]
Video, sound, 40:00 min. Best viewed in full-screen.

Art can be a forecast, a prophecy, an uncanny premonition. In part, this is how João Ferro Martins regards his film fatto di sottile sfumatura di rumore (made of the quietest shade of loud). The multi-year project began shooting 2017 in the Lisbon gallery 3+1: Contemporary Art. The artist then expanded the narrative in outdoor settings. The film was made in the middle of a personal catharsis for the artist, one closely linked to crises in the world. After three years of work, Martins’ completed project was set to open in the same gallery as a solo exhibition on March 13, 2020. The show never opened. Two days after installation, coronavirus shut down the city. “When I was installing it,” states Martins, “I could never imagine that it would never premiere. But in a very strange and explicit way, the film relates totally to the effects of Covid-19, even as a mystical announcement of it. The Italian voice-over in the image with clouds relates to climate change and unstoppable capitalism, but today it can be seen as the disaster that came upon us in form of this virus driving humanity into absolute ‘slow-motion’. The most interesting parallel is the character dressed up to fight against Ebola. Today it seems like an echo of Covid-19 professionals equipped to face the task of directing patients to quarantine.”