NYAB Event - New Wijiji "New Age Frontier"

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At Mountain Fold Gallery
Media: Painting, Installation

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Mountain Fold announces the exhibition "New Age Frontier", by New Wijiji, an art collaboration of Barbara Schauwecker and Tom Hohmann. The installation consists of paintings, a canoe, and tree-loom woven cloths. It plays with the idea of a "New Age Frontier"-- a fantasy world that entwines possibilities for a future landscape with visions of ancient American cities.

Drawing inspiration from "Wijiji", among other prehistoric village sites in the Southwest and along the Mississippi valley, and from Native American spiritualist Dennison Toosie, Hohmann and Schauwecker imagine New Wijiji as a world based on ruins of pre-historic cities as well as New Age spirituality. Hohmann and Schauwecker envision this community in response to the idea that European settlers built cities throughout the American continent, their "New" world, and named them after Old World locations, while the remnants of large cities that surrounded them--very old, very mysterious, hidden in the land--were nearly invisible to them.

The installation presents an historical trace of new age culture as if viewed in a museum. The paintings suggest a new structuring of communities in the future and of how people might live in them. One painting portrays the town Moundville, an indigenous language, culture, and learning center; the University therein has a New Age recording studio that educates and provides the musician with tools to create music using the sound of nature. Another painting depicts a New Wijijian person running in the field with buffaloes, recording the sound of nature.

In order to work on this show, New Wijiji camped in the woods in Green County, New York. They lived outdoors during the month of August in the crook of a small stream, with a large tent for their studio. Going inward as well as exploring their surroundings, they have tried to tap into the core vibrations of all living things: in many ways, this exhibition documents their forming personal relationships with objects, symbols and rituals, as well as pursuing harmony, spirituality, enlightenment, balance and foundation in nature.

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