Bajo El Sol Gallery will hold an opening of its new exhibit, “Talismans and Archives,” at 6 p.m., Friday, March 6, in Mongoose Junction, St. John. The exhibition will feature the work of multidisciplinary artist Kharis Kennedy and studio jeweler Kim Nogueira.
The show will be the first public exhibit on St. John of works by Kennedy, who recently relocated to the island from St. Croix. She will be showing works on canvas and paper from multiple series, including “Comfort Animals,” “Logo Creatures” and “Touch Has a Memory.” Kennedy’s large-scale and sometimes unsettling paintings tackle themes that include consumerism and fashion, feminism, identity and the body as a source of knowledge.
She will be joined by Nogueira, a long-established artist on St. John, who will be showing works to include enamel, copper and gemstone brooches made in collaboration with photographer William Stelzer. Nogueira describes her studio jewelry as “miniature navigational atlases to the unseen, the unheard, the unknown: the world behind this world.”
Both Kennedy and Nogueira have an extensive list of national and international exhibitions and publications under their belts.
The exhibition is a part of Mongoose Junction and Bajo El Sol Gallery’s monthly First Friday Series. There will be music in the courtyard performed by Evanna Chinnery and Friends and light refreshments will be served.
About the Artists:
Kharis Kennedy approaches the body and objects as sites of knowledge and repositories of awareness that can be resourced to reveal inner truths. Her themes are broad but interlaced: the depiction of animals who reflect the spirit of their owners; a satiric presentation of fashion’s role in informing individual and social identities; self-indulgence and the struggle for reparation and healing.
Her paintings, videos and performances are psychologically revealing and deeply felt. The artist works with the contemporary themes of gender, status, aging, power and control as constructs of identity; her insights are afforded by her complex experiences as a female artist, as a mother and as a daughter. Kennedy was born in California in 1976.
The daughter of a professional basketball coach, she was raised internationally but returned to America in 1999. Her art has appeared in public and private sites – including New York, Seattle and Miami, as well as in the Virgin Islands; Tokyo, Japan; and Shenzhen, China. She serves on the Artist Board of the Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts in the U.S. Virgin Islands. She lives and works on St. John.
Kim Nogueira is an automaton maker and award-winning studio jeweler who received her education apprenticing as a production goldsmith for 16 years. She continues to deepen her skill level with intensive workshops taught by renowned masters in the field. Her Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Smith College supports the thought-based explorations that undergird her wearable. narrative art practice.
Nogueira’s work has been in juried and curated exhibitions both abroad and nationally, and her work can be found in several periodicals and books. Her home base for the past 25 years has been St. John.