Trying
Anna Lise Jensen

June 5 — August 29, 2020
curated by Valeria Federici

On-line Opening Reception
Friday, June 5th from 7:00-7:40 PM
WATCH HERE

Stand4 Gallery and Community Art Center is pleased to host the solo exhibition Trying, by Anna Lise Jensen. The exhibit will open on June 5th with an on-line opening reception from 7:00-7:40PM, moderated by Doug Chapman on Zoom, and presented in collaboration with our friends at Turnstile Tours.

Jensen is a Brooklyn-based artist originally from Denmark. From community gardens to bike lanes, Jensen activates both public and private spaces through a process of community building and activism.

In search of an artistic practice that would not contribute to the pollution she laments, as well as for a practice that reacts to, and acts on, urgent political issues such as women’s rights, human rights, and gentrification, Jensen tries to balance her drive for political activism with her desire for solitude and the pleasure taken in organizing shapes, colors and words.

For Trying, Jensen’s work attempts to answer to the question “What sort of art practice would allow me to live with myself these days?” Through a combination of text on planetary disintegration, photographs, and objects made through recycling large prints done while she was an artist in residence at the campaign headquarters of Ross Barkan, Jensen reflects on the relational potential of encounters with others and the role of space in those encounters.

As part of her public programming for the exhibition, Jensen will collaborate with Sebastian Maguire and the SAFE community and will assemble works by asylum seekers and asylees on an outside wall in the gallery garden. SAFE, Seeking Asylum & Finding Empowerment, is an organization that offers legal assistance and mentoring to immigrants who have fled their countries of origin due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.

Jensen holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Hunter College, NYC, where she was awarded the Hunter College Foundation Scholarship for exchange studies at the Slade, London. Jensen also holds an MA in International Relations from University of Chicago, IL. She has exhibited at Edward Hopper House, Center for Book Arts, A.I.R. Gallery, Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning, Bronx Arts Space, Flux Factory and MCLA Gallery 51. Jensen presented her work at the conferences of National Women’s Study Association, Open Engagement and the Alice Austen House Museum, and on NPR’s, The Brian Lehrer Show. She has received funding from the Manhattan Cultural Arts Fund, Queens Arts Council and Norddjurs Kommune (Denmark). Recent projects can be found at Stand4 Gallery, Garibaldi-Meucci Museum, and the Old Stone House as part of Brooklyn Utopias. Her work is included in the collection of Candida Höfer.

Valeria Federici is an independent curator and a scholar whose research interests revolve around themes of sovereignty, relational space, social movements, cultural identity, information technology, and art. Federici received her PhD in Italian Studies, as well as an MA in History of Art and Architecture, from Brown University. She is currently a research associate at CASVA, the Center of Advanced Study in Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

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