YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME AND I COMMIT TO FRICTION
YOU SAY YOU LOVE ME AND I COMMIT TO FRICTION
September 7 - 28
Participating artists:
Ifrah Mansour
Nat Kim
Delaney Keshena
Nailah Taman
Cameron Patricia Downey
Baki Baki Baki
Curated by Sati Varghese Mac
You Say You Love Me and I Commit to Friction brings together six local artists whose works connect through themes of sculptural + bodily orientations to space, sovereignty, and disorientation as a futurism.
Beginning at disorientation, displacement, discomfort, distance, even disenchantment… I ask how the intimacy of a compassionate scrutiny—even when it is not elegant—can lead us to deepening truths. Giving shape to this question, the exhibition seeks to think with you about the worlds we commit to. Each of these artists knows a specific mode of negotiating their existence, and here I envision abandoning proof so we may point towards that far away possibility of joyful ongoing negotiation between all of our relationships, a process of learning how to connect our shapes and create impressions on each others surfaces, how we push each other to adapt and take shared forms in exercises of a sovereignty that is relational.
Friction as a fertilizer is an unassuming treasure. The friction between our foreheads in a promise, your words when you protect, feet at the different layers of ground, or our familiar paths and the chafing reminder of change. Resistance generates countless gifts and there is space, or we will learn to make it, for all of our pluralities.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Nat Kim
Nat Kim (b. 1993) is a maker and artist who lives and works in Minneapolis, MN. She was born in South Korea but grew up in the Bay Area and Northern Virginia. They use wood, metal, and carefully selected raw materials to create ritual objects, interactions, and hand tools to examine how our attraction to and use of objects affects how we understand ourselves and are understood by others. Kim is currently exploring concepts of how to connect with memory, ancestors, and communication with the past through ritual.
Nat has led production for Amorphic Robot Works, helped establish Western North Carolina Sculpture Center, directed and built projects for The Office of Cultural Work, and led exhibits at Catawba Science Center. Nat is currently a shop instructor and technician for UMN College of Design, member of Southside Battletrain, volunteer at Chicago Avenue Fire Arts Center, and board member at Fireweed Community Woodshop.
Cameron Downey
Cameron Patricia Downey (b. 1998) is an anti-disciplinary artist born and raised in North Minneapolis, Minnesota whose work oscillates between photography, film, body, sculpture, curation and otherwise. The incidental, the precarious and the misremembered are central to these works which strive to archive, unfurl, make-altar-of and bring fantasy to the Blues of Black life and relation.
Cameron graduated from Columbia University in 2021 with a double concentration in visual art and environmental science. Downey’s art has been exhibited by HAIR+NAILS, Minneapolis; Engage Projects, Chicago; Aronson Gallery, New York; Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin; Kemper Museum, St. Louis; Macalester College Law Warschaw Gallery, St Paul; as part of Midway Contemporary Art’s Off-Site program; M+B Gallery, Los Angeles; and Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Barbara. They are the 2023 recipient of the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation’s MN Art Prize and are a recent artist in residence with the Walker Art Center’s Moving Image department and Second Shift Studio Space of Saint Paul.
Ifrah Mansour
As a Somali, refugee, and Muslim multimedia artist and educator, my work is a testament to the enduring spirit of resilience and the power of storytelling. Rooted in the traditions of my heritage, my art seeks to explore themes of trauma, displacement, and healing through a variety of mediums including poetry, puppetry, film, and installations. My artistic journey began with a deep appreciation for the oral traditions of my grandmother, whose stories of survival have profoundly influenced my practice.
Through my art, I seek to bridge cultures and generations, offering a platform for healing and deeper connection. By sharing our stories, we reveal our shared humanity and foster a deeper, more compassionate world.
I have received several prestigious fellowships and grants, including a 2021-2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant, an early-career artist grant from Forecast Public Art, and a Bush Foundation Fellowship. Additionally, I was recognized as a Lab Fellow at the Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics.
Nailah Taman
Nailah Taman is an Egyptian American multidisciplinary artist + cultural worker currently based in Los Angeles. They graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2015 with a BA in Visual Arts, and were a member of PF Community Studios in Minneapolis from 2022-2024. Their work explores ancestral collaboration, tactility, and sigils and un-language, often emerging in sculptural forms. They are an avid collector of objects deemed precious by their own criteria.
Nailah is a recipient of a 2024 MSAB Creative Individuals Grant, and has previously displayed work at Cue Arts Foundation (NYC), Public Functionary (MN), Form + Content (MN), Pro Arts Oakland (CA), Stay Home Gallery (TN), amongst others.
Baki Baki Baki
BakiBakiBaki is a Black Native multidisciplinary artist, teacher, and puppeteer. Their sole goal is to live the full time artist dream of their Grandmother. Turning towards spell and root work at every turn, BBB’s art pulls from the metaphysical magic of their culture, faith, and sensuality.
Baki is a recent fellow at the Creating Change Gallery where they held their debut solo show Reclaim Your Divinity.
Delaney Keshena
Delaney Keshena is an enrolled citizen of the Menomini Nation and interdisciplinary artist born in Shawano, Wisconsin. Keshena uses hair, skin and glass in their practice of crafting objects that retell stories of family, nation and contemporary Indigenous experience. In 2022, Delaney was awarded a two year fellowship with North House Folk School where they deepened their relationship with the craft traditions and materials of the boreal forest. Delaney is a teaching artist and has shown in Italy, Belgium and throughout the United States. They are currently in a two year residency at Public Functionary’s Studio 400 and are based in Minneapolis, MN.
Sati Varghese Mac (Curator)
Sati (she/her) comes from communities of artists with dreams of a world that could support the multiplicities of their people. Her practice commemorates the will to transform as a part of nature’s cycles of change through inquiry into her ancestral imaginaries from South India and China, and a lineage wandering through Venezuela and Kuwait, alongside her experiences living in Mexico City, New York City, and Minneapolis where she is currently based. Her experiences lead her to a fascination with transgressive holes in destinies and how time and scale can interrupt fictions of fixity. Sati left the Rhode Island School of Design with a degree in Sculpture, and is a 2024-25 fellow with the Emerging Curators Institute. She has worked with organizations such as Intermedia Arts and the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, and as an artist and filmmaker, her work has been shown at the RISD Museum (Providence, RI), MoMa PS1 (Queens, NY), 100% Silk Gallery (Toronto, ON), Studio 11 (San Francisco, CA) and Public Functionary, where she now works to curate.