Please join Lesley Art + Design as we celebrate two exhibitions at the Lunder Arts Center. The Office of Exhibitions will be hosting an evening reception for the exhibits "The Kingdom" featuring work by Laurel Nakadate, and "Méllonece" featuring work by Elisabeth Smolarz. The reception is free, and both artists will be in attendance.
In her series "The Kingdom," artist Laurel Nakadate focuses on familial histories—both real and imagined. The exhibition centers on a series of thirty-four photographs in which Nakadate envisions a physical connection between her son and his grandmother who never had the opportunity to hold him.
Alongside the "The Kingdom," Nakadate exhibits selections from her "Strangers & Relations" series. She discovered previously unknown family members across the US, then wrote to them and arranged to meet them in order to make their portraits. Nakadate’s subjects appeared without prior instructions, choosing their own clothing and/or props. In these portraits of strangers, Nakadate presents a newly developed and complex family album.
In the exhibition "Méllocene," meaning “future memories,” Elisabeth Smolarz grapples with the current age of mass extinction faced by endangered species. Her photographs and videos appear fragmented, evoking the sense of artifacts unearthed by future archaeologists many centuries from now. The exhibition serves as a symbolic reminder of our disconnection from the natural world, and the underlying grief stemming from the ongoing daily loss of hundreds of plant and animal species who coexist with us on this planet.