On a quiet street in Greenwood, a modest bungalow awaits a common fate in housing-hungry Seattle. It will be demolished to make room for a multiunit condo building. But before it disappears, it will be transformed into a home for art.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This uncommon project, called \u201cONCE REMOVED,\u201d is the brainchild of Zo\u00eb Hensley and Sammy Skidmore, who have partnered with a local developer to turn soon-to-be-razed buildings into opportunities for artists to create new, site-specific work. The Greenwood house \u2014 which opens with a party Saturday \u2014 is the first in what Hensley and Skidmore hope is a series of exhibitions that, according to Skidmore, will give these places \u201cone last breath.\u201d<\/p>\n
As gallery managers of two prestigious galleries \u2014 with Hensley at Foster\/White and Skidmore at Traver Gallery \u2014 and active members of Seattle\u2019s art scene, Hensley and Skidmore identified a lack of options for some artists to show experimental work. So when the chance to temporarily use a house came along through a family friend, they constructed the idea and invited five artists to create new art that engages with themes of impermanence, memory, domesticity or displacement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Walking through the front door and into the living room, visitors will be met with ghostly figures draped in black, a sculptural installation by Jenikka Cruz<\/a>, a student at Seattle University (where, full disclosure, I work). This unsettling encounter was inspired by the artist\u2019s contemplation of the phrase \u201cforever home,\u201d which, she said, \u201cpromises eternal security, but we don\u2019t always have control over what happens in life.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI see a house as having a soul,\u201d Cruz added. \u201cAnd the house as a vessel for many souls. There’s a lot of memory within this house. I hope the audience can reflect on their own experiences and memories of safety in their own homes.\u201d<\/p>\n Nadia Ahmed<\/a> has filled a bedroom with \u201cShrines,\u201d composed of items left behind in the house, then preserved in beeswax and displayed like relics. \u201cThis was someone’s home,\u201d Ahmed said. \u201cThat\u2019s such a special, intimate place to be. I want to be really considerate and respectful of that as I explore how we place value on these things. What counts as sacred? Is a home sacred?\u201d<\/p>\n Ahmed is also creating a video and performance piece about her personal and cultural experiences with home and loss of home as a first-generation Pakistani American. \u201cI\u2019m thinking about how all this movement, this displacement, this immigration trickles down into me,\u201c she said. \u201cWhat happens when a space is gone and you\u2019re forced to move on?\u201d<\/p>\n In the other bedroom, Rachael Comer<\/a> has installed her own bed, imprinted with the shape of her body and stiffened by starch. Visitors can literally peek under the covers to view a video of Google searches based on people\u2019s changing habits with pornography. \u201cIt is in no way a condemnation of pornography,\u201d Comer stated, \u201cbut it is a strong statement against misogyny. I\u2019ve been talking with people from my generation, who grew up with access to pornography during a time when it became incredibly more violent and aggressive.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Comer is also thinking about how a very private experience is shared in a \u201cworld filled with technology that’s affecting us far more than we’re able to deal with. It has such profound impacts in society, in community, in intimate relationships.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Rounding out this new family of artists is Gaeun Kim<\/a>, who will contribute ceramic doorknobs and other meditations on architectural elements, and Ali Meyer<\/a>, who will project a video into a hole in a wall.<\/p>\n Hensley and Skidmore are interested in how all of these artists are creating new work that will communicate with each other in a particular place within a short period of time. (There is no closing date set for the exhibition because they will pack up as soon as demolition is scheduled, likely before the end of this month.)<\/p>\n Hensley, who is also a woodworking artist, underscored the importance of the physical site, saying: \u201cWe experience so many things online, I want to create spaces that are really accessible, that draw people in, where you truly have to be there to experience it all.\u201d<\/p>\n Noting the one-of-a kind nature of the project, Skidmore, who is a musician, said: \u201cLike a musical performance, it\u2019s a moment in time that can’t be duplicated or replicated or captured in the same way.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cONCE REMOVED\u201d is a marker of the here and now, but it also joins a lineage of house-based art installations going back at least as far as 1972\u2019s \u201cWomanhouse\u201d in Los Angeles, where now-famed artists Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro collaborated with students and other artists to convert an abandoned house into a monthlong site for installations and performances.\u00a0<\/p>\n