Lamont Gallery: American Mortal

Featuring installations such as two shelves of books hand-sewn with a collection of soldiers named Edward who died overseas for the United States or a canvas burned with the words, “EX” “PAT” and “RIOT” on separate lines, American Mortals aims to rethink Americans’ national identity.Exeter’s exhibit is the third iteration of American Mortals, a collection of art by Melissa Vandenburg and Becky Alley. The exhibit, which will remain in the Lamont Gallery from Sept. 3 to Oct. 19, uses domestic items to delve into notions of patriotism.Lamont Gallery Curator Lauren O’Neal began planning the exhibition in 2018 with the intention of offering an artistic platform and catalyst for political inquiry and dialogue. “American Mortals proposes the idea that we can be part [of] a nation—however that is defined—but still question its politics and policies,” she said. “Artists … use their work to examine concepts such as partisanship, pride, and national identity, and to offer alternative ways of considering these ideas.”The exhibit serves as a vehicle to challenge accepted aspects of America. “What characterizes patriotism, what is the impact of war, how and what do we commemorate and what democracy is, are complicated, even fraught, concepts,” O’Neal said. “They have always been so, but it seems especially urgent to examine them anew in today’s political climate.” Each artist has different values concerning their creations. For Vandenburg, examining the concept of “homeland” has been a priority.  “Flags, maps, Buddha silhouettes and gravestones are altered into somewhat antagonistic forms,” she said. “Questions surrounding patriotism, pride and partisanship begin to emerge in work that is both satirical and idealistic. The results are overwhelmingly about mortality, but not exclusively dark or negative.”On the other hand, while Alley also uses commonplace materials, she is more drawn to “matches, soap, bed sheets, needles and thread.” Using these items, Alley often conveys overwhelming statistics in numbers. “With this ongoing series of memorials, I invite the viewer to viscerally experience the obscene human cost of war while attempting to behold and digest the staggering scale of innocent lives lost,” she said.While the pieces in the exhibit were created individually, they work together in the exhibit, Vandenberg explained. “There are common denominators you can find right now between each of our pieces,” she said. “It’s amazing because those works come together. There becomes a conversation between them.”Members of the Exeter community enjoyed the exhibit. Upper Adam Tuchler, who attended the gallery’s opening, was particularly taken by one of Alley’s pieces. “I was drawn to this installation of white flags, a work that I interpreted as a graph signifying the rise of deaths [in war] ,” he said. “It was a very moving piece.”Lower and Lamont Gallery Proctor Jasmine Xi believes that American Mortals in an exhibit which provokes conversation. “This exhibit allows artists to discuss values and opinions on it through a form of communication which is art,” she said. “I hope students take away the value of art and what you can do and how you can really express yourself.In fact, the Lamont Gallery proctors oversaw an interactive element of the exhibit, a button-making design station during the opening reception for American Mortals. Senior and Lamont Gallery Proctor Isabel Hou explained the premise. “This gallery is one that you absorb,” she said. “This is putting pen to paper—connecting with what art is really about—and bringing a little bit of art from the walls into your own hands by making a button that represents what you’ve taken away from the exhibit.”The exhibit, according to Hou, is also very timely in context of the broader American political climate.“I think it’s important on the eve of our election to be questioning things like this, to be making conversation about this,” she said. “We should be starting to ask ourselves these questions about what it’s like to be an American.” While Hou recognized the limited time of Exonians, she asserted that visiting the gallery is an excursion to carve time for. “Students here are constantly furthering their knowledge of culture, and the gallery is one of the biggest sources of culture on this campus,” Hou said.The exhibit will become a medium for the community reflection, O’Neal believes. “Spend time with the work, and with your own ideas about how you define citizenship, allegiance and belonging,” she said. “Rewrite the definitions that no longer work. Imagine new ways of being together.”