2019


You Must Not Stand In One Place


Curated with Sopheak Sam

Featured Artists
Ryan Aasen
Kamal Ahmad
Autumn Ahn & Camille McOuat
Dennis Congdon
Marissa Cote
Medar de la Cruz
Evelyn Eastmond
Tory Fair
Lina Maria Giraldo
Nash Glynn
Duy Hoàng
Kathya Landeros
Jason Lin
Jonathan Mildenberg
Peter Pa
Sheida Soleimani
Jess X Snow
Keith Washington
Chien-Ying Wu



Distillery Gallery, MA, On view May 16 - July 26, 2019.
 

You must not stand in one place brings together artists who tap into alternative worlds by creating grand and radical metanarratives of society. Through a variety of mediums, they investigate global concerns of today: identities, markets, machines, and environments to arrive at value systems that challenge what we can strive for in our current world.

The exhibition borrows its title from an Igbo saying, “If you want to see it well, you must not stand in one place,” often attributed to the late writer, Chinua Achebe. The saying takes on layered meaning when transposed within the exhibition; viewers are invited to move among the constellation of metanarratives and consider where they stand.

The works in this presentation are by contemporary voices constantly investigating and speculating realities, using aesthetic and conceptual strategies to overcome inertia and activate movement. You must not stand in one place is an exhibition that expands the possible, whether directly or obliquely, through modes of rendering, remixing, and radicalizing.





“You Must Not Stand excels as a forward-thinking exhibition because it asks a lot more of its viewers, compelling them to learn (and even do their own research), empathize, speculate, and practice unbiased looking and listening. ... I mean it when I say that experiencing You Must Not Stand In One Place had a seriously positive effect on my own sense of global, socio-political and personal consciousness. Designed to provide visitors with a comfortable and critical space to reflect upon their own identity and position in society ...”
Gina Lindner for Boston Hassle



Resources
︎ Read the Boston Hassle article by Gina Linder

︎ Distillery Gallery Exhibition page