Erin Currier
I have long made a life of traveling to other countries half of each year-- where I gather “post-consumer waste” and investigate the human realm I encounter: its individuals, cultures, languages, and, above all, its struggles. The materials—both tangible and philosophical—are then transported in boxes and in travel journals, to my studio in New Mexico, whereby they are forged into a new series of collaged works. Not unexpectedly, the struggles I have encountered throughout Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe, have now reemerged in the United States, and have provided a fertile ground from which my work continues to flower.
From California to Cairo consists of a selection of works that follow the parallel trajectory of my own recent travels-- through Latin America, then as an expat in Berlin, through parts of the Middle East, in Cairo just weeks after the January 25th, 2011 revolution, and back to my own country,-- with the world’s recent myriad movements toward social change. Many of the works share their origin at the international airport. Geographically, airports connect cities such as Caracas, Montevideo, Milan, Rabat, and Beijing; socio-politically, airports connect the cross-continental concerns of Uruguayan street sweepers with Tunisian fruit vendors; the hopes shared and the equal perils faced by migrants illegally traversing the Sonoran Desert and the Mediterranean Sea ; as well as the ever-increasing security and surveillance—nowhere more apparent than at the international airport—that concern and affect us all. A growing number of United States soldiers, students, teachers, civil servants, workers, mothers, daughters, and, sometimes even policemen, are echoing their counterparts abroad in questioning, “What does our future look like, and, more importantly, what do we want our future to look like?” A growing number of US citizens are following in the footsteps of their counterparts in Greece and Tunisia, Mexico and Chile, to answer that question with direct action.
It is my hope that this exhibition will illuminate the struggles that cross seas and continents to unite us, and will compel the viewer to further inquiry and action.
Erin Currier 2012
From California to Cairo consists of a selection of works that follow the parallel trajectory of my own recent travels-- through Latin America, then as an expat in Berlin, through parts of the Middle East, in Cairo just weeks after the January 25th, 2011 revolution, and back to my own country,-- with the world’s recent myriad movements toward social change. Many of the works share their origin at the international airport. Geographically, airports connect cities such as Caracas, Montevideo, Milan, Rabat, and Beijing; socio-politically, airports connect the cross-continental concerns of Uruguayan street sweepers with Tunisian fruit vendors; the hopes shared and the equal perils faced by migrants illegally traversing the Sonoran Desert and the Mediterranean Sea ; as well as the ever-increasing security and surveillance—nowhere more apparent than at the international airport—that concern and affect us all. A growing number of United States soldiers, students, teachers, civil servants, workers, mothers, daughters, and, sometimes even policemen, are echoing their counterparts abroad in questioning, “What does our future look like, and, more importantly, what do we want our future to look like?” A growing number of US citizens are following in the footsteps of their counterparts in Greece and Tunisia, Mexico and Chile, to answer that question with direct action.
It is my hope that this exhibition will illuminate the struggles that cross seas and continents to unite us, and will compel the viewer to further inquiry and action.
Erin Currier 2012
LAMPEDUSA
28" x 40" mixed media collage & acrylic paint on wood $7,900