Gina Siepel

Gina Siepel: New World Reconsidered

February 24 – March 20, 2020

Mazmanian Gallery presents Gina Siepel: New World Reconsidered, a collection of works in which interdisciplinary artist Gina Siepel contemplates the contemporary American landscape. In the context of environmental crisis and a critical reconsideration of settler-colonial American legacies, the works included reflect the artist’s lifelong engagement with nature and the built environment of the American northeast. Rooted in a contemplative mindset, the exhibit seeks to ask, what is it to look authentically at a landscape with a critical perspective?

This multimedia investigation of how history and culture are inscribed on to the landscape includes drawing, sculpture, and video. Videos were shot at a variety of locations, including the Montezuma National Wildlife Refuge in central New York State, a second-growth mixed deciduous forest in western Massachusetts, and a section of the Northeast corridor from the window of a train. Audubon’s Birds investigates the legacy of naturalist and artist John James Audubon, with drawings of taxidermied bird specimens that once belonged to him. To Understand a Tree is an ongoing multimedia installation work that explores the complex, politicized interrelationship of wooden furniture production and the North American forest.