Statement:

Island Gallery is pleased to present Humilis, a group exhibition tracing the mutability of language and its grounding in the natural world.

The work delves into the intricacies of personal and collective memory-keeping, exploring how these memories can be processed alchemically. Misremembrance intertwines with migratory experiences, presenting ecological facts and fictions, while uncovering power structures deeply rooted in language.///

The word humilis is a Latin adjective derived from the noun humus, meaning "ground, dirt, earth." Here, language performs as an arbiter of value, embedding connotations of what is low, undesirable, and insignificant.

Ancestral histories are dotted with blank spaces, raising questions of nativity: What does it mean to truly belong? How do we delineate a space for ourselves?

Zalika Azim uses text and installation to process histories of Black migration, bridging improvised language and oral tradition to examine how land functions as an archive for cultural memory.

This exploration of memory and the land is also found in the work of Naomi Nakazato, who develops a physical type of mercurial boundary-making by printing on natural fibers of seaweed. Each gesture marks a body in motion, restlessly searching for a place to settle and dwell, reflecting the transient nature of belonging.

Rowan Renee connects queer embodiment with the hostile arctic landscape. The fragility of the human body prompts consideration of self-collapse and our interdependency with the natural world, recalling Julia Kristeva’s Theory of Abjection.

Their process results in hybrid forms that contemplate the future of threatened communities and ecosystems. This desire to create solidarity is emphasized in Hong-An Truong's multimedia installation.

Truong uses liner notes from a 1973 activist folk album to bring a past revolutionary idealism to the present, evoking a spirit of radical protest through the cooperation of sound and tapestry.

The theme of personal memory is explored by Pauline Rossignol, who uses photographs from her family album to stitch together an ancestral history. Her work traces lineage through images of her family’s diaspora. Kristian Kragelund’s investigation of ownership and colonial narratives complicates the linear structure of the archive.

Kragelund's imagery references botanical etchings made in 1772 of flora imported to the British Empire from colonized lands, interrogating formerly accepted false truths. Kaur Alia Ahmed investigates the alchemical process with a group of glass sculptures.

There is transitory nature in the way the material overlaps, wraps, collapses on itself, marks made through rhythmic movement. Light passes through the glass, distorted by the bulbous exteriors.

An act of collecting and memorializing is highlighted in Christopher Lin’s work, where molten cicada shells are arranged into a preserved structure evoking hierarchy as well as the cyclical nature of memory.

This gesture of memory preservation extends to Hings Lim’s wall-suspended sculpture, composed of collected biomaterial from hair salons. Lim traces the collective memory of a neighborhood, paying homage to its diverse occupants.

Azadeh Elmizadeh processes her connection to her home country through paintings that reference Middle Eastern mythology, creating transcultural and temporal connections with translucent washes of paint.

This exploration of boundaries and connections is mirrored in Jordan Loeppky-Kolesnik’s sculptures, which reference hydrological infrastructure. Loeppky-Kolesnik examines forms that divide, block, designate, and impose across large-scale networks of water.

Adriana Furlong engages in a practice of excavation, carving out and revealing the interiors of solid spaces with modular forms, granting access to previously inaccessible places.

This hidden view of memory and space resonates with Francesse Dolbrice’s development of a taxonomy of signs and symbols. The signs appear in both their drawings and sculptures, containing specific translations in their forms and articulating a personal language known only to the artist.