A Situation of Meat: Mel Carter, Maggie-Rose Condit, Braxton Congrove, Dakota Gearhart, and Elizabeth Mputu

September 23 – October 29, 2017
Photos by Mario Gallucci

A Situation of Meat presents a group of new installation works by Mel Carter, Maggie-Rose Condit, Braxton Congrove, Dakota Gearhart, and Elizabeth Mputu, exploring contemporary femme identity as mediated through online culture. Using sculpture, video, and digital prints, A Situation of Meat acts as a paradox between the beauty and the grotesque of gendered self-presentation.

Viewers are greeted by Gearhart’s canopy of sculpted electrical cords. These open onto an illuminated pool housing a multiple channel video installation. Congrove creates a playful staging of her sculptural arches, clouds, and soft pools. Carter fills an arched wall and reflective pool with a dream like video piece with images of ume, clay, and tapioca. Condit recreates her childhood bedroom in And Don’t Call Me Shirley with furnishings covered in bubble wrap, sugar paste, and dripping maraschino cherries. Elizabeth Mputu exhibits new video work from her ongoing digital project, Cyberserenity. Together the these works form an eclectic expression of navigating femme identity across digital and physical platforms.

Public programs

Thursday, September 14, 2017
Open Studio with Julia Greenway and Braxton Congrove at c3:initiative
7326 N Chicago Ave, Portland, OR 97203

October 14, – November 11, 2017
Safety in Numbers, a solo exhibition and performance by Jono Vaughan at Killjoy Collective
222 SE 10th Ave # 102B Portland, OR 97214

Saturday, October 28, 2017
Elizabeth Mputu presents sanza a performance event as part of the closing for A Situation of Meat, the inaugural exhibition of Disjecta’s seventh Curator in Residence season with Julia Greenway. Responding to his/her exhibited video work “epigenetic therapy treatment” Mputu offers a healing workshop and performance in which the artist engages directly with participants to put forward tools for physical and emotional healing.
Mputu describes his/her work as an opportunity to give the gift of his/her ancestors’ wisdom as guidance in order to better navigate life. Through video, interactive media, and performance, sanza reconstructs our notions of well-being, both in the physical and digital space.
8371 N Interstate Ave, Portland, OR 97217

September 9 – October 28, 2017
LVLZ Healing Center: IRL Application of Digi-Manifestation, a solo exhibition by Elizabeth Mputu at Interstitial
6007 12th Ave S, 3rd Fl Seattle, WA 98101

Mel Carter grew up in the Bay Area and now lives and works in Seattle. She graduated with a BFA in Photomedia from the University of Washington School of Art & Art History & Design in 2014. She explores relationships between humor, the grotesque, whimsy, and intimacy through mixed media. She uses materials she’s comforted by in her practice; food, assortments from dollar stores, and given objects, to illustrate a wanting to care for others. Her heritage and childhood greatly influences her work, as much of it is created from memories or dreams she remembers from when she was young. She’s that one picking up the thing on the sidewalk your mom told you never to touch.

Maggie-Rose Condit received her BFA in Illustration from The University of Arizona in 2013, and her MFA from Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2016. Maggie-Rose is an artist whose work investigates pop culture, humor, and feminism through installations, video, sculpture, and standup comedy.

Braxton Congrove is an artist living and working in Richmond, Virginia. She received her BFA in Studio Art from James Madison University in 2015, and focuses mainly on sculpture, installation and performance art.

Dakota Gearhart is the progeny of a philosophizing mechanic and a feminist director. Identifying as a bisexual mermaid, her practice in video and installation deconstruct hierarchical value systems of ecological desire and consumption. Dakota has exhibited at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; On The Ground Floor, Los Angeles, BronxArtSpace, New York, FalseFront, Portland; Vulpes Vulpes, London; and Taiyuan Normal University Gallery, Shanxi. She is the recipient of the Artist Trust Project Grant, the 4Culture Individual Project Grant, and the Jane Davis Fellowship. She received her BFA from Florida State University and her MFA from the University of Washington. Currently, she lives and works out of a decomposing cement box in the Pacific Northwest.

Elizabeth Mputu is a Florida native of Congolese descent. He/She studied Performance Art at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and prior to that attended DePaul University. Mputu’s work mostly focuses on the artist’s ability to grapple with sexuality, gender, the taboo, health, healing and African spirituality filtered through the performative and digital medium. He/she hopes that the findings of their investigations, as defined by the multi-dimensional and biographical pieces the artist creates whether by video, web or physical will be considered THOTful contributions to the archive of the human condition.