The Stairwell Space, Bridgeport, CT
Sep 12 to Nov 1, 2025
Scott Carrillo Azevedo, Aruni Dharmakirthi, Joan Hanley, Elena Kalkova, Kate Quarfordt, and Jency Sekaran
Photo credit: Andrew Schwartz
Given recent events in the U.S. including violence and widespread discrimination against immigrants, LGBTQAI and others, it is vital to move beyond the dominant narrative to encompass the plurality of people and stories that compose our communities and country. Imagining this diverse society, with its many shades, shapes, smells, sounds and movements is no small political feat. In Imaginaries of Diasporic Self, 6 artists, Scott Carrillo Azevedo, Aruni Dharmakirthi, Joan Hanley, Elena Kalkova, Kate Quarfordt and Jency Sekaran, working in various media embrace multiple diasporas—Indian, Sri Lankan, Irish, Mexican, African American and Russian. These artists apply art as an essential tool to excavate difficult contemporary themes, reclaim histories from their gaps and erasures, trouble dominant perspectives and as acts of healing and repair, hope and transcendence. They poignantly excavate the self and consider dilemmas of identity, immigration and life in the U.S.
Tenets of inquiry, exploration, dialogue and thinking through are seen in the artists’ works in multiple media on canvas, fibre, cement and paper. In each of these works, media and form are used critically to explore and synthesize essential contemporary themes. These artists through their work unpack in real terms what is often hidden, yet so important within diaspora and life. They invite us to consider differently and understand with wisdom the past and the dark and complex shadows it casts over the present. To work within these imaginaries is to think about how better to move and exist within present day uncertainties. The imaginary can also provide us with speculative agency, allowing us to break free from repressive norms and/or the imprisonment of traumas and the past.
In her book “On Poetry,” Mary Oliver says that poetry is a river upon which many voices travel. Each poem “is timeless; each arrives in an historical context.” Similarly, Imaginaries of Diasporic Self shows work that will move throughout The Stairwell Space providing a river of voices and visual works that arrive in their own historical and present contexts at a pungent and disturbing moment in American history. Within this stairwell river, these works are not isolated islands but are reflections— reflecting back to us other people, other cultures and other ways of encountering and engaging with the world.