June 3 - October 9, 2022
From Blue Star Contemporary:
“Blue Star Contemporary, is proud to present Travel Distance, a group exhibition conceived by independent curator and interdisciplinary artist Amber Zora, opening on June 3, 2022 at Blue Star Contemporary. The artworks featured represent how veterans and their families have processed, moved through, purged, and reclaimed their experience around military service. The exhibition features the work of Miridith Campbell (Kiowa), Joe Devera, Claudia Hare, Jenn Hassin, Gina Herrera, Jessica Putnam–Phillips, Daniel Rios Rodriguez, Renee Romero, and Sarah Sudhoff.
Deployment and relocations can be and often are confusing times. Individual military members grapple with their daily tasks at hand while processing their distance from home and the future. For families who have undergone multiple deployments, there is a constant reshuffling of the household order. On the other side, everyone mourns the lost time and attempts to put the pieces back together. But the pieces often do not fit like they did before.
The exhibition also explores the multitudes of the veteran-identity. Veterans are parents, siblings, immigrants, Indigenous peoples, environmentalists and more. Even though service members and their families are widely depicted in the media from insurance commercials to sniper movies, the common media portrayal does not represent the uniqueness and differences within the veteran population.
Travel Distance is complmented by The Veterans Book Project a library of books authored collaboratively by artist Monica Haller and dozens of contributors who have shared their personal experiences with the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The printed books provide a place or “container” that slows down and materializes the great quantity of ephemeral image files that live on veterans’ hard drives and in their heads. The Veterans Book Project is presented in BSC’s Art Learning Lab.
These exhibitions coincide with the Blue Star Museums program, a collaboration among the National Endowment for the Arts, Blue Star Families, the Department of Defense, and more than 2,000 museums. Running from Memorial Day through Labor Day 2022, museums across the United States offer free general admission to active-duty military personnel and their families. Blue Star Contemporary annually participates in this program to help thank its military community.
About Amber Zora
Amber Zora is an independent curator and interdisciplinary artist based in Rapid City, SD. She received her Bachelor of Arts degree from University of Alabama at Birmingham and a Master of Fine Arts degree in Photography + Integrated Media from Ohio University. From 2018-2019 Zora was the National Veteran Art Museum Curatorial Fellow, serving as one of the key organizers of the National Veterans Art Museum Triennial & Veteran Art Summit. Zora has also worked as an an arts administrator for Kala Art Institute, Berkeley, CA and First Peoples Fund Rapid City, South Dakota. Zora has exhibited her work in local and national galleries including the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Las Vegas Contemporary Art Center and the National Veterans Art Museum, among other notable spaces. Zora was enlisted in the US Army for 8 years and deployed to Qayyarah West, Iraq for one of those years as an ammunition specialist from 2006-2007 with the 592nd Ordnance Company.
Image: Jessica Putnam-Phillips, Bismillah, courtesy of the artist
The Story of Blue Star Contemporary
BSC presents exhibitions with artists from San Antonio and around the world sharing their global perspectives that encourage understanding, empathy, change, and action, fulfilling our mission to inspire, nurture, and innovate. Like most non-collecting contemporary art spaces, BSC contributes fresh insight and perspective on larger issues affecting society and culture by highlighting trends, movements, and conversations happening in art.
BSC was founded for artists by artists in 1986 in a grassroots movement sparked by the cancellation of the first major museum exhibition of contemporary art in San Antonio. Six arts supporters and artists founded Contemporary Art for San Antonio to provide an exhibition venue for artists and the public. With the support of a handful of donors and property developers, the founders, artists, and volunteers converted an abandoned warehouse into a gallery for the first annual Blue Star Exhibition. Over the years, BSC has grown to encompass a professional staff, a robust calendar of onsite and offsite exhibitions, community collaborations, creative youth development programs, international exchange opportunities for artists, and public art projects.
BSC is an anchoring cultural institution in our city, and a destination for residents and tourists alike. Located along the banks of the San Antonio Riverwalk, BSC is a central highlight between the bustle of downtown and the UNESCO World Heritage San Antonio Missions. BSC has remained true to its artist-centric foundation alongside this fiscal and programmatic growth. BSC is San Antonio’s first WAGE-certified organization, committed to transparent and equitable payments to artists for their creative contributions to BSC’s exhibitions and education outreach programs. Through its commitment to artists with a social practice, tuition-free youth arts education programs, and community-centric fundraising, BSC is dedicated to equity and social justice in all its endeavors.”
On View: June 3, 2022 | 6–9 pm
116 Blue Star
San Antonio, 78204 TX
(210) 227-6960
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