Thanks to Maria Vassileva and Structura Gallery for inviting me to speak at ICA-Sophia, Bulgaria on June 7, 2024, alongside Triangle Arts’s Director Nova Benway (NYC). I will be speaking about Revolving Red Monuments, a collaborative augmented reality work made with contributions from Albena Baeva, Eva Davidova, Slava Savova, Dessislava Terzieva, Martin Atanasov, Rositsa Getsova, Elena Kaludova, and Kalin Serapionov. Learn more here.
Honored that my AR Sculpture Pandora’s Snatch was included in Gallery Gallery‘s pop-up exhibition In the Empty, Still, Undeveloped Space of the City as part of Buna 2 Contemporary Art Forum in Varna Bulgaria, May 25 – June 3, 2024. Thank you curators Albena Baeva and Rene Beekman for showing my piece alongside works by Eva Davidova, Iska Prodanova, Elena Kaludova and Albena herself. There was a wonderful walking tour led by Albena and Rene (in which I participated) on May 26. https://www.gallerygallery.space/en/in-the-empty-still-undeveloped-space-of-the-city
A new version of my vulture augmented sculpture, Vulture Veneration Unleashed, was included in a pop-up exhibition curated by Panke.Gallery at the Chaos Computer Conference in Hamburg Germany, 37C3. Link: https://www.panke.gallery/exhibition/animal-city-unleashed
Vulture Mothers AR sculpture is part of panke.gallery’s October exhibition Animal()City, in good company with Eva Davidova, Joachim Blank, Jonas Lund and Sahej Rahal. https://www.panke.gallery/exhibition/animal-city
Thankful to Sabine Gruffat for including my animation Séance for Dead Horse Bay in the Digital Wilds exhibition which was a sidebar of the Cosmic Rays 2023 film festival that she co-produces with Bill Brown in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Other artists in the exhibition include Jessye McDowell, Patricia Dominguez, eteam, and Kristin Lucas. The terrific music for my animation was created by Andrea Williams. See more about Digital Wilds here: https://cosmicraysfilmfest.com/2023-digital/
I am thankful to Eva Davidova for including my animation Séance for Dead Horse Bay in the program she curated, Light Year 92: If all bodies attract each other, how is it possible the Universe is expanding? The program screened on the Manhattan bridge December 1, 2022 projected from Dumbo as part of this monthly screening series produced by Leo Kuelbs in collaboration with NYC’s Department of Transportation. On the same day the screening was also projected outside in Berlin by Scope BLN gallery and in Toronto by The Drey gallery. Other artists in the show: Janet Biggs, Dakota Gearhart and Faith Holland. More here:https://www.leokuelbscollection.com/light-year-92
My video sculpture, Monuments Dissected, will be part of the InLight festival in Bryan Park Richmond, Virginia, November 18-19, 2022. InLight 2022, an outdoor, cinematic festival, was curated by Tiffany Barber and Wesley Taylor. My video sculpture, which features a powerful musical collage created by Grisha Coleman, is part of my larger installation Monuments Dissected: Engaging Public Art and Contested Spaces. Other artists in the show include: Dream Hampton, Zalika Azim, Stephanie Dinkins, Nathaniel Donnett, Gene Felice, Masa Lemu, and Luis Vasquez La Rouche. For more: https://www.1708inlight.org/past-inlight-2022
Very happy to be included in Albena Baeva’s wonderful Solidarity Machine exhibition at Projektraum Galerie M, Marzahn, Berlin between Sept 3 – Oct 29, 2022. Séance for Dead Horse Bay is the result of an unbridled mashup of impulses, affinities, and collaborations. First it is a tribute to the non-human ghosts living across New York City’s industrial waterways and specifically references the history of Brooklyn’s Dead Horse Bay. Through the 19th century and into the early 20th, the bay was a dumping ground for bodies from neighboring horse rendering plants that manufactured glue and fertilizer. Second the animation is a tribute to Muybridge’s Animal Locomotion studies from the 1880s and the development of cinema out of the love of horses, money, and the science of vision in relation to the American imaginary of limitless resources. Third it showers love on Shirley Clarke’s Bridges-Go-Round. Forth it is a product of Albena Baeva’s Solidarity Machine, an AI instruction device that builds on Fluxus scores that question received notions of belonging, order and hierarchy. Finally, Séance for Dead Horse Bay is a collaboration with composer Andrea Williams, whose score invites all the witches. Web: https://www.nki-berlin.de/
Excited to be working on a new project in Sofia Bulgaria in July 2023. I am honored that CEC Arts Link selected my project for an Arts Prospect Residency; they are generously funding my entire trip and have connected me with my brilliant host Maria Vassileva, director of Structura Gallery. Very honored to have been selected for this opportunity.
Thanks to Kat Griefen for inviting me to be a part of this tribute to the legendary and amazing Mary Beth Edelson; the tribute was hosted by the Brooklyn Rail online May 3, 2022. For my contribution I showed a short edit of a video interview that Kat and I conducted with Mary Beth in her SoHo studio in 2008. This interview was part of a short documentary that I made for AIR’s 35th anniversary event and exhibition at Fales Library at NYC.
Pandora’s Snatch is an augmented reality sculpture made for the #MakeUsVisible project for Women’s History Month in New York City as one of 31 virtual monuments of gender diverse figures juxtaposed against physical statues of men across the city. Pandora’s Snatch is meant to be opened by the Prometheus statue in Rockefeller center. Artist Meredith Drum recounts the myth that links the two artworks: “When Prometheus gave fire to men on earth, Zeus was pissed! In an act of vengeance, he created the first woman, and sent her with a jar full of trouble. But his misogyny backfired as Pandora-earth-goddess brought the cycles of life and death and the promise of a beginning wherever there is an end. Hats off to the great Mary Beth Edelson and Nancy Spero for inspiration.” Click this link with your phone and the AR Sculpture will load through Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ar/701400011240271/
Copyright © 2024 Meredith Drum