New Monuments for a Future Las Vegas

 
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Curated by Wendy Kveck 

New Monuments for a Future Las Vegas presents the collaborative work of artist teams who consider Las Vegas in the past and present, emphasizing community and relationships while aspiring to collectively built futures. This multi-media exhibition is shaped by questions about what and whom we choose to memorialize, what imagery and objects represent our values and history, whose stories are told, and who creates a monument? Even as everything around us is changing, these artists have responded to this historical moment with a call to purpose of imagining for a better tomorrow.  

Featured Nevada writers and artists teams include: Emily Budd and Laurence Myers Reese; Darren Johnson and Toshie McSwain; Holly Lay, Mary Sabo, and Lilia Todd; Yasmina Chavez and Julian Tanaka; Brent Holmes and Ashanti McGee; Nanda Sharif Pour and Ali Fathollahi; Sapira Cheuk and JK Russ; GULCH: Mikayla Whitmore, Justin Favela, Krystal Ramirez, Lance L. Smith; Jennifer Kleven and Quindo Miller; Tiffany Lin, Clarice Tara Cuda and Karla Lagunas; Heidi Rider and Adriana Chavez; Alisha Kerlin and Emmanuel Muñoz; Erin K. Drew and Kristin Hough; John McVay and Aaron Cowan; Jung Min, Marc Luu and Dulce Maravilla; Chase McCurdy and Erica Vital-Lazare; Claire Vaye Watkins and Brent Holmes; and working independently Bertha Gutierrez, Denise Duarte, Fawn Douglas, and D.K. Sole.

Curator and Artist Talk

Featuring Wendy Kveck and participating artists Brent Holmes, Ashanti McGee, Mikayla Whitmore, Justin Favela, Emily Budd, Laurence Myers Reese, Tiffany Lin, Heidi Rider, and Adriana Chavez.

 
 

Interested in learning more? Read What Futures Will We Build Together? by curator Wendy Kveck on the Double Down Blog.

 
 
 

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Drawing Out a Path for Queerness (Monument), Cast aluminum, steel, wood, closet door, pigments, wishbone, love letters from an ex.
Emily Budd and Laurence Myers Reese, with Iulia Filipov-Serediuc, Christina Uran, Micah Haji-Sheikh, Tiffany Lin, and Keeva Danielle Lough.

Goddess, Acrylic Airbrush and Mixed Media, Size: 42"x80.”
Jung Min, Marc Luu, Dulce Maravilla.


 
 
 
 

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Reunion: Monument to a Colorful Future (pictured at Lloyd D. George Federal Courthouse), Photograph and a Maquette Foam Board, Plastic 
Darren Johnson and Toshie McSwain.

In Recognition of Memory, Sculpture Assemblage.
Ashanti McGee and Brent Holmes.

 
 
 
 

Banality of Privilege, 3-Channel Video Installation
Yasmina Chavez and Julian Tanaka

Banality of Privilege explores the notion of privilege as selective cultural ignorance.

Performance created, directed & edited by Yasmina Chavez in collaboration with Julian Tanaka
Music: “Blues for Self Take” by Julian Tanaka
Performers (in video): Yasmina Chavez & Brent Holmes

Banality of Privilege was originally performed live in front of an audience during the 2017 UNLV Spring Jazz Festival. My friend and frequent collaborator local jazz musician Julian Tanaka invited me to create a performance piece for his composition "Blues for Self Take."  As I listened to the song, there was this sense of continuity among a cacophony of explosive sound. It’s like a sustained drone that nonstop mercurial arrangements of notes keep attempting to rupture to no avail until the end when an alarm clock like arrangement finally succeeds in pulling us out of a sonic reverie. The ending of this composition grounds the piece in a present reality of the universal need to wake up and go to work. What that work is and how it’s experienced I attribute to privilege; in the U.S., specifically, white privilege. At the same time, I saw the people who would be attending the jazz concert as privileged. The performance was an attempt to illustrate the complexity of white privilege from both sides of the aisle. 

This is a video adaptation of the original live performance with, also long-time collaborator and well-known local performance artist, Brent Holmes. The video uses the recorded version of Tanaka’s "Blues for Self Take" and replaces the original performer representing white privilege with a digitized presence of caucasian skin/“whiteness” as defined by RGB numerical color palette codes for digital illustrations.

 Yasmina Chavez is a time-based media artist and curator who lives and works in Las Vegas, Nevada. She received her BFA in photography from the University of Nevada Las Vegas in 2011 and MFA in Electronic Integrated Arts from Alfred University in New York in 2016. Chavez works across disciplinary boundaries - video and sound installations, experimental documentary video, design of custom systems for cinematography, dance choreography, poetry, printmaking, and performance art. Chavez’ practice explores individual/social identities expressed through different rhythms of time and idiosyncratic relationships to everyday life. She creates openings into enigmas and society’s structural quandaries. Chavez has exhibited nationally and internationally and has been a featured artist in media-based festivals including the 2018 Vibrant Digit in Shenyang China, 2013 Life Is Beautiful festival, 2012 and 2014 London Biennale Las Vegas satellite exhibits, and the Off the Strip new genres festival in 2010. In 2011, she co-founded and co-curated 5th Wall Gallery in downtown Las Vegas and is a recurring performer in R.A.D.A.R. L.V. – a Vegas-based bi-monthly performance art event established in 2018. Her fifth solo exhibit, The Suchness of Light–an abstract photo series–was exhibited at two Clark County libraries in 2019 & 2020.

Julian Tanaka is an alumnus of the Las Vegas Academy of Performing and Visual Arts and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He completed his B.M. in Jazz Arranging in 2013. At UNLV, Tanaka studied clarinet with Marina Sturm and jazz arranging with Joe Lano. In 2016, under the tutelage of Bill Dobbins, he received his M.M. in Jazz Writing from the Eastman School of Music. While there, he studied saxophone with Charles Pillow. Tanaka's work as a woodwind specialist has included the 2012-13 international tour of the Broadway hit musical, Come Fly Away; a 2013-14 residency with Grammy award winning R&B group, Boyz II Men, at the Mirage Hotel and Casino; and, most recently, a full-time position with BAZ at The Palazzo. As a composer, Tanaka has completed commissions for the UNLV Wind Orchestra, LVA Jazz III, Hamilton High School Jazz Ensemble A (Los Angeles), and Penfield High School Studio Orchestra (Western New York). He currently teaches jazz at UNLV and at the Nevada School of the Arts.

What is a house? Who builds a house? How long is the lifespan of a house? Is it the duration of the architectural structure standing, or as long as it is ...
 

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So, You Want to Buy a Monument, Video Still Photograph
Adriana Chavez and Heidi Rider

Banality of Privilege, Video Installation, Chair, Table, Silverware, Video Screen
Yasmina Chavez and Julian Tanaka

Re: Monuments A Crucible for Recasting Monuments, Zine
Aaron Cowan and John McVay
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Living Black Pillar IIII, Acrylic On Paper
Chase R. McCurdy

TEN57, Video
Nanda Sharif-pour and Ali Fathollahi

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Manual By Codes, Zine, 2019
Tiffany Lin
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CODES, 2020 Las Vegas Collaboration, Video
Clarice Tara Cuda, Karla Lagunas and Tiffany Lin

P.S. I Hope You are Well, Postcard Front and Back
Alisha Kerlin and Emmanuel Muñoz

Nine Commemorative Plaques, Photographic Installation 
Erin K. Drew and Kristin Hough

 
 
 

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Sundown at Matchpoint- A Monument to Structured Leisure, Tennis Racquet, Deflated Backetball, Athletic Glove, Flowers Video
GULCH (Justin Favela, Jennifer Kleven, Quindo Miller, Lance L. Smith, Krystal Ramirez, Mikayla Whitmore)

Distance Displays, Mixed Media
Holly Lay, Lilia Todd, Mary Sabo

 
 
 
 

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Alien View, Mixed Media
Sapira Cheuk and JK Russ

 
 
CODES is an investigative performance that explores the rites and practices surrounding flag handling in the United States. The project operates as a mental tabula rasa - a platform for spectators to question who and what the flag represents, and why it is deified in this manner. The project implements the steps of hoisting and lowering an invisible flag following the rules of display and care found in Chapter 1 Title 4 of the United States Code. Additional interpretations are subsequently woven into the existing protocol, referencing acts of respect, grief, denouncement, and protest. The pantomime is performed along with a conceptual composition by Gu Wei entitled History, which plays upon themes of chance through the randomization of notes from the Star-Spangled Banner. CODES was first realized in 2018 and has since been performed with Lin and collaborators in New York City, Philadelphia, and Washington DC. In the spirit of of questioning processes of memorialization for the New Monuments exhibition, Lin is collaborating with artists Clarice Tara Cuda and Karla Lagunas to imbibe new meaning into the existing choreography of CODES through the lens of gender, non-neutral bodies, and the politics of death. Clarice Tara Cuda is a multidisciplinary artist who thrives in meticulous processes. She conceptually discusses her personal narratives with womanhood, grief, and freedom. Continuity can be found in her deconstruction of the female body and emphasis on materiality. She often pairs objects of beauty and delicacy next to protrusions of aggression and tension. Her work intends to prompt discussion on societal or self imposed systems, and our own mortality. Cuda currently lives and works in Las Vegas Nevada after earning her B.F.A. from UNLV in 2019. Karla Lagunas is a multi-disciplinary artist who researches freely and extensively allowing threads to connect and guide my work to a medium. Her performance work utilizes the inescapability of my brown and female body as a lightning rod for investigations on the intersections of gender, sexuality, race, immigration, and class. Her visual art often employs the use of dialectics or metaphors used to layer over complex systems to make them tangible without oversimplification. Lagunas is driven by the potential to activate curiosity and explore how our built reality could be seen as a series of choices made in the distant past and perpetuated into the future. Tiffany Lin is a visual artist, wordsmith, and dreamer. Her work examines how power is expressed in the subtext of American vernacular. Through a multidisciplinary practice that spans drawing and performance, she demonstrates how language is deployed tactically to conceal white hegemony under a framework of neutrality while non-white bodies are marked as conditional. She holds a MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Illustration Practice and a BA in Gender & Women's Studies and Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley. Lin currently lives and works in Las Vegas where she joins the Department of Art at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Design and Illustration.
 

CODES, Clarice Tara Cuda, Karla Lagunas and Tiffany Lin
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Essays

Living Monuments by Bertha Gutierrez

Make a List of Everything You Have Lost by Claire Vaye Watkins

Transformation by Denise Duarte

Pedestrian Monuments by D.K. Sole

Future Selves Are Stone by Erica Vital-Lazare

Breathe by Fawn Douglas

Exhibition Series, Online/Past ExhibitionNevada Humanities