Empathy, gender, identity and art at MIAD

Maybe it is the power of suggestion, but entering the exhibition Humanly Possible: The Empathy Exhibition at MIAD, one’s sense of feeling and awareness seems a little more acute.

Perhaps it is the power of the images you see immediately, like large-scale photographs or stark black-and-white prints, or maybe it’s the hushed recorded voices that float from an inner room.

A sense of mindfulness is always a good mental place from which to start experiencing any exhibition, but for this one — as the question of how we open ourselves to and understand others — it is especially pertinent.

Humanly Possible originated two years ago at Instinct Art Gallery in Minneapolis. Since then, it has grown to include eight Minnesota-based artists, joined by additional artists from Milwaukee and elsewhere.

There are a variety of issues the artists ask us to consider, including immigration, cultural tradition, animal rights — and most of all, how our identity and the way we consider others’ affects the way we move through this world.

A portion of photographer Lois Bielefeld’s “Androgyny” project is presented through a number of large-scale color portraits in a single room. Her straightforward images defy stereotypes, challenging ideas of what gender looks like or how clothing affects our reading of a person’s identity.

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Bielefeld’s installation “The Bathroom” also is part of the exhibition. A single stall is located in the gallery, but through the locked, closed door, we hear the voices of the people in Bielefeld’s photographs. They describe themselves and their experiences, their voices reverberating and speaking to us as though in confidence in a private place. It is all the more poignant as the public restroom is a locus of contention for individual rights and gender identification.

Many of the other installations in Humanly Possible convey a strong sense of vulnerability, even fragility. A dislocated — or destroyed — person under a slip of cloth is the focus of Gundrun Lock’s fragmented “Looking to the Margins,” constructed of ephemeral cotton, newspaper and paint. Lock’s sad “Lyuba,” described as a baby woolly mammoth sculpture, also affects us with a sense of loss, decay and abandonment.

Mirroring empathy

Nooshin Hakim Jevadi’s “Requiem” pieces take a more metaphorical approach. They began with the most ordinary of objects: a couple of shoes. They were put on one day, just as you and I do every morning, but to really walk in another’s shoes is something quite different.

The wall text states that they are “rioter’s shoes from 2009 riot in Iran.” The title “Requiem” suggests the result. The shoes are hung on the wall like relief sculptures and are half-covered by large blue crystals growing over their surface. As the crystals take over, they seem to change and obliterate the quotidian nature of these ordinary things, changing them into something more akin to a talisman or icon.

Peter Nelson’s “Nine Monologues” video installation is even more vicarious. The video simply shows the artist — a young white man — who seems to speak the words of the nine women whose voices we hear. From the perspectives of their different ages and backgrounds, they express their thoughts about feminine stereotypes, relationships, perceptions of male power and their ambitions.

In the context of the #MeToo movement, there is added relevancy to this work and the empathetic adoption of different voices. It is also a perspective that rings through the exhibition as a whole.

On exhibit

Humanly Possible: The Empathy Exhibition continues through March 10 in MIAD’s Frederick Layton Gallery, 273 E. Erie St., River Level, Milwaukee. The exhibit is free to see. 

On the calendar

A series of events and discussions complement Humanly Possible. Events are free and open to the public.

On Feb. 1 at 6 p.m., “Empathy Through the Visual Arts: An Artist’s Discussion” brings together three artists — Lois Bielefeld, Tina Blondell and Gudrun Lock — along with curator John Schuerman and moderator Leslie Fedorchuk to discuss the concept of empathy and its manifestation in the visual arts. Reception to follow.

On Feb. 15 at 7 p.m., “Empathy, Connections and Borders: An Evening of Poetry and Storytelling,” is a night of visual and oral storytelling by artists and writers from Milwaukee and Minneapolis. They’ll explore empathy, creating human connections and crossing borders.

Performers include Michael Kleber-Diggs, Anais Deal-Marquez, Kavon Cortez-Jones, Dinorah Marquez, Isela Xitlali Gómez and Eli Avalos.

On March 1 at 7 p.m., “100 Lullabies (Lullaby Songs for Refugees)” is an experiential platform for listening to stories of war, face to face with artists who grew up during war in the Middle East. Audience members will be invited to sing and record a song of comfort or a lullaby in their own language for children affected or displaced from their motherland by war. Participants include Nooshin Hakim Javadi, Pedram Baldari and Katayoun Amjadi.