January 11 – March 23, 2024
TILT Institute Main Gallery
Free & Open To The Public
I wanted to extend an invitation to a group of artists I greatly admire. Not quite curation, but rather a welcoming into a foundational part of my own practice: that of responding to and from a series of collected photos. These are images I’ve accumulated over the years, from thrift stores, flea markets, the street—my own family photos getting mixed in at times. I’ve been holding and working from these images for over a decade now. Photos not made with “art” in mind, but rather a drive to document—ourselves, our communities, our homes, our lives.
I met with Alina, Connie, M, MAP, Nick, and Steph to see what was on their minds at this moment. I then selected images (five) for each artist. Photos offered as a prompt or springboard: no expectations as to what might be produced, no requirement that they make their way into the final work(s). A gesture of call and response. I said I would create a single work too, one that holds all of the photos offered, a preface or ledger of sorts. Together—the invited artists, the unknown original photographers, TILT, myself—are co-creating this exhibition, leaning into the minor details, larger themes unfolding organically.
Rami George
Organizer
Steph Garcia
Steph Garcia (she/her/ella) is an interdisciplinary artist that is passionate about the intersection of art, community engagement, and landscapes. Through socially engaged practices, she seeks to find new ways in which to center and elevate underrepresented and historically marginalized communities, and enact tangible change in our shared public spaces. Within her own artistic practices, she utilizes storytelling, installations, and writing to examine forgotten histories and “hidden” narratives.
Rami George
Rami George (born 1989, U.S.) is a multidisciplinary artist currently based on Lenape land in what is now called Philadelphia. Their work—spanning photo, video, installation, text, and music/sound—has been presented in exhibitions and screenings at the William Way LGBT Community Center, Philadelphia; MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Anthology Film Archives, New York City; Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, Scotland; Grand Union, Birmingham, England; the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia; LUX, London; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and elsewhere. They continue to be influenced and motivated by political struggles and fractured narratives.
Nick Moncy
Nick Moncy (he/they) is a multimedia artist who explores the fragmentation of the self as a means of existence. Through video, performance and animation, he investigates the departure of icons, symbols, and gestures from their original contexts, deconstructing nostalgia, heteronormativity and tradition. He received a B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of Pennsylvania in 2019 and currently resides in South Philadelphia.
M Slater
M Slater (they/he) is an artist from Philadelphia whose work focuses on the intersections of photography, architecture, and language. Their interdisciplinary practice spans typography and archival work as well as sculpture, photography, and printmaking to wrestle within the stickiness between body, place, and fiction. M has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at Vox Populi, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, The Woodmere Art Museum, Fjord Gallery, and Little Berlin (Philadelphia, PA); The Luminary (St. Louis, MO); and Bedroom Gallery, (Hong Kong). Their work has also appeared in ‘Title Magazine’ and ‘Facility.’ Alongside (and in communication with) their studio practice, M works in graphic design under the alter-ego ‘Belsh’ where they collaborate with other artists and cultural institutions on exhibition design, art direction, and long-term art projects. They are also currently leading a project at the William Way LGBT Center Archives to photograph and catalog their permanent art collection for eventual online public access.
Alina Wang
Alina Wang is a visual artist living and working on unceded Lenape land (Philadelphia). Through image-making, she explores gesture, process, materiality, and what it means to document and remember.
Connie Yu
Connie Yu is a writer and artist based in Philadelphia. Their practice takes place in poetry and printmaking, cooking and strength training, and takes shape from the administrative aspects of these data — asking the limits of work and its measure, measure and its work. Connie co-curates, edits, and publishes work by/for queer and trans Asian artists with their print collective FORTUNE, and tends to its small-scale risograph imprint Many Folds Press. They are currently the Project Manager of The Velocity Fund, a Philadelphia-based Regional Regranting Program that offers direct-to-artist grants. In this work, they are committed to sharing resources and asking questions that can make arts programs, grants, and projects more accessible, and attentive, to more people. Read Connie’s writing in the chapbook modest technologies, 1 thru 3 (Neighboring Systems, 2019), and in the online directory Conflicts of Interest.
